ERRATA: A BOOK OF HISTORICAL ERRORS. Illustrated by Hemesh Alles. 1992. 32 pages, Green Willow Press/Simon and Schuster. $14.
With the ever-popular "Waldo . . . " books it is little wonder that other "hidden picture" books would appear. "Errata" is a "what's wrong with this picture" hunt-and-seek book. Twelve full-color pictures represent events from periods in Egyptian, aboriginal Australian, Zulu, Sioux, Norman, Inuit, Aztec, Viking, Mogul, Minoan, Chinese and Inca history.Ten things in each drawing are impossibilities; for example, on a Norman feast day one figure is holding a fork and another is using playing cards. In other pictures an Inca warrior reads a newspaper, a Minoan scholar consults a globe and on an aboriginal kangaroo hunt, a boy plays a trumpet.
Some of the miscues are easy to find, like a streetlight in the time of the Vikings, but others are subtle in placement such as a stained glass window or coins representative of the Hun dynasty.
An invitation " . . . if you get stuck . . . all the answers will be revealed" causes lots of flipping back and forth through the book.
There is no age limit on "Errata"; everyone will have guesses about the contents. Even after all 10 mistakes are recognized in each drawing, it's fun to go back and figure out how the clever artist hid so much in such little space.