My Grandma Leonie

Delicate pastel watercolors illustrate the quiet, affirming story of a child's relationship with her grandmother. With understated eloquence, Le Tord celebrates the special bond that both springs from and is expressed in the sharing of simple, everyday experiences. Together the girl and her Grandma Leonie listen to the radio, laughing over comedy shows and shivering when aliens invade; it is the memory of precisely such moments that comforts the child after her grandmother dies. The first-person narrative captures the unique blend of naivete and clarity that characterizes a child's vision. (""One day my Grandma Leonie got sick,'' the child says. ``She drank hot cocoa. But she would not feel better.'') The illustrations are in perfect counterpoint to the text, extending it by what they show as well as what they omit: when Grandma Leonie leaves for the hospital, we see only her customary chair, now empty. Through it all runs the child's rich, sustaining certainty of how much her Grandma Leonie loved her. Ages 3-7. (October)