cover image The Angel & the Wild Animal (First American Edition)

The Angel & the Wild Animal (First American Edition)

Michael Foreman. Atheneum Books, $13.95 (26pp) ISBN 978-0-689-31492-6

With intuitiveness and creativity, Foreman has written a story about a child who is sometimes an angel, sometimes a wild man, but most often just a little boy. As an angel, the child is usually asleep, his golden head on his pillow. But when wild, the child is wide awake. He fights the dark and bedtime, roars in the rocks by the sea, causes floods or earthquakes at home, and makes the whole neighborhood shake. Usually, however, he's just a little boy pretending to be an Indian, or Batman, or a knight or a pirate, and these are the times everyone likes best. Foreman's playful illustrations probe both the good and bad aspects of a highly imaginative child with a good dose of humor and much finesse. The colors are bright, offset by dark, bold type . Readers familiar with last year's Half Wild and Half Child by Lizi Boyd will enjoy this treatment of a similar theme. Ages 4-7. (Mar.)