The Big Green Pocketbook

Ransom ( Thirteen ; Ladies and Jellybeans ) follows a likable girl and her mother as they run errands one day. The child has nothing to put inside her ``big green pocketbook that's just like Mama's,'' but friendly townspeople soon give her quite an assortment of items, from the punched bus tickets to a tiny calendar from the dry cleaner's. On the bus ride home, the content girl clutches her stuffed pocketbook as she dozes, but she manages to leave it behind when she and her mother reach their stop. Youngsters will be entirely satisfied with the expected happy ending to this sprightly narrative, which is studded with inventive imagery (cars coming over the hill ``look like pick-up ducks at the fair''; the bank's ``cool marble walls smell like pennies''). Bond, creator of the Poinsettia books and illustrator of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie , offers whimsical, cartoony pictures, placing contemporary characters against a pleasantly old-fashioned backdrop (the town has a five-and-ten and a drugstore with a bustling soda counter)--a playful and most suitable setting for this winsome story with its timeless theme. Ages 4-7. (May)