Riverbend is a quiet little town that happens to exist within the pages of a child's Wild West coloring book. When a mysterious substance begins to show up on townsfolk -- marks from a child's crayons -- Sheriff Ned Hardy aims to do something. "It's a book that starts with one point of view and steps into another. The average bildungsroman acoomplishes this kind of transition in several hundred pages: Van Allsburg does it in thirty-two." -- Kirkus Reviews, pointer