Owl Lake

Masterful woodcuts come alive in a flow of nocturnal movement in this new arrival from Japan, which tells the story of an owl family's search for food in the magnificent wilderness of the author's homeland. The sparse translation reveals only the essentiala kind of haiku imbued with a respect for the natural world, similar in style to the meditative picturebook Dawn by Uri Shulevitz. But it is the astonishing quality of the illustrations themselvesthe fine details of feathers, moonlit reflections and the fierce-eyed owlsthat distinguishes the work, which won the Japan Prize for Outstanding Picture Books in 1983. All ages. (April)