Where Are You Going, Manyoni?

Stock ( Armien's Fishing Trip ) returns to Africa in her latest work, which follows a girl on her trek to a small village school near the Limpopo River in Zimbabwe. Her full-spread watercolors, highlighting the variegated browns and greens of the African veld, beautifully depict the country's diverse land formations, vegetation and animal population. Her narrative, too, paints a picture: ``The calls of the woodland kingfishers tremble through the air as Manyoni crosses the fever tree pan . . . and enters the shady kloof where the shy impala feed.'' Action is minimal--the text is more vignette than story--allowing the reader to concentrate on the sumptuous landscapes. Stock concludes with a glossary, a picture dictionary of the various animals that appear in the illustrations and a brief note about how she set about painting them. The endpapers, notes Stock, contain copies of cave paintings ``made by indigenous people . . . thousands of years ago. The land and its inhabitants probably appeared very much to them as it did to me.'' Ages 4-8. (Aug.)