General Store

Laroche, who created brilliant paper collages for Lois Lenski's Sing a Song of People , now brings the same confetti-bright image-making to Field's lyrical wish list of a child's dreams of a general store (a story also illustrated recently by Nancy Winslow Parker). Two friends visit the girl-owner of the store, preparing a basket for a picnic; as the three of them gather fixings from the various parts of the store, all of its nooks and crannies are revealed: shelves of canned and boxed goods, a refrigerator full of dairy products, bins of miscellany, a glass showcase of baked goods. Laroche's papercut figures are at home in this textured world, and the pages can be pored over frequently and still offer up new surprises in composition and contrast. Ages 4-8. (Nov.)