THE ROOFTOP ROCKET PARTY

This clever story set in New York City celebrates the power of dreams and ideas. With an understated style, Chambers, a newcomer to children's books, creates the rocket scientist Doctor Gass, whose brain brims with "mathematical certainty," and Finn, an imaginative boy who comes to stay with him and wonders where the man keeps his rockets ("In a very secret and unusual place," the doctor replies). Just before midnight, a wolflike Night Thing appears at Finn's window and invites him to the Man in the Moon's birthday party the next night. But Doctor Gass says the moon is made of rock, not cheese, and "there is no Man in the Moon to eat it." Chambers subtly creates a likeness between the good doctor and the Man in the Moon (watch the portrait on Finn's wall). When Finn sees rocket-shaped boilers on top of city apartment buildings, he exclaims, "I know where you hide your rockets!" Even as the doctor denies it, he seems to suppress a gasp. And when Finn does indeed fly to the party in a water tower rocket, he meets a moon man in a union suit who bears a striking resemblance to his earthly host. Using thick black lines filled with bright washes of color, Chambers depicts a joyous planetary romp, complete with gravity-free bouncing and playing in moon caves. The ending suggests that science and imagination live side by side, a moral that will amuse any child who has ever been frustrated by an adult's know-it-all logic. Age 4-7. (Apr.)