A Garden of Whales

``Last night in my tub, in my tub while I scrubbed, I dreamed that I lived in the sea with the Whales. / Magnificent Whales. Mysterious Whales. Mystical, Musical, Mountainous Whales.'' This tale of deliverance unfurls in luscious prose that rolls trippingly off the tongue. A child's enchanting dream deepens to warn him of danger: he knows he must restore the population of disappearing whales. So he calls for their tears to seed a garden where families of whales are reborn. Like a contemporary ``Kubla Khan'' for kids, this fantasy appears to rise directly from a dream. Its surrender of logic clears, rather than obscures, the vision and leads readers to the book's heart--the Eskimo folk belief that we and the whales are one and the same. With her effulgent oil pastel illustrations O'Connell fully enters Davis's dream and strikingly echoes the fluent reverie. This is a bedtime read-aloud that will set heads nodding. Ages 3-7. (Apr.)