The Mountains of Quilt

Willard's latest creation features a bespectacled grandmother, a mischievous magpie and four magicians representing the mountains of Sandusky, Elyria, Cleveland and Detroit. The grandmother has nearly completed a quilt ""red as embers, green as ferns, with a border of silver and gold stars on sky-blue velvet.'' The magicians, who lunch together on Tuesdays, have invented a pair of special spectacles, a bewitched baseball, musical sneakers and a magic flying carpet colored in red, green, silver and gold. How the magpie unites the magicians, the near-sighted grandmother, the flying carpet and the quilt is an imaginative bit of hocus-pocus enlivened by dePaola's whimsical artistry. Wonderful for reading aloud. Ages 4-8. (October)