The Magic Chalk

A boy named Jon finds a piece of chalk, dropped by a witch, and uses it to draw a stick man on a fence, not knowing that it is magic.

After being bothered by a pedagogic owl and doing some absurd mathematical problems, they leave and soon descend into a cave, wherein they meet a crocodile and a tiger, but the boys clear up alive.

He charms the king, queen, and princess with his violin playing and claims to be rich, showing them his wallet as proof.

BETTY MILES, of the Bank Street College of Education found the illustrations "appropriately dashing yet tenuous" and that "the hither-thither situations are set with typographical abandon".

[1] Kirkus Reviews describes it as "A delightful patchwork of fancy, puzzles, poetry, and nonsense..." that "At every step the reader's visual sense is challenged" and saw it as "an inventive world peopled with characters ... designed to consistently amuse and surprise.