Special Effects in Film and Television

Unlike a recent Barney volume flung across the room by disgusted EW critics — it sang at us — this sensible, crisply photographed production grasps that the role of young people's lit is to explain special F/X, not spew them. Child or no, one could spend many a happy moment suspended in Special Effects in Film and Television's plainspoken, slightly Richard Scarryesque pages, learning how a ''faceful of custard'' transforms an average-looking dude into a ''menacing intergallactic warrior,'' examining rainstorm simulations, opening the stuntperson's bag of tricks, or just considering a cross section of a Steadicam (science fiction, it turns out, isn't everything in this busy, busy world). Coool. A-

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