MAMA WILL BE HOME SOON

Compassion and understanding ripple through Michella's perceptive debut, about a girl left with her grandmother for a few days. As Mama boards the ferry, she tells Lili she will be back "very soon," and asks her to look for her yellow hat in the crowd when she returns. The days crawl by, and whenever Lili spies a yellow object in the distance (a sunflower, umbrella, balloon), she hopes that it's Mama's hat. After several such disappointments, she tearfully tells Grandma, "Soon is over and she's not here." Of course Mama does return, bringing Lili a yellow hat of her own. Minchella certainly knows her preschoolers—the incomprehensibility of time ("Is tomorrow soon?"), the impatience ("I don't think Mama's ever coming home") and the waves of sorrow that can hit a vulnerable child any time, even at a circus. There, Narahashi's (Here Comes the Year) watercolors depict the spectators as gray and hazy, and the balloon a bright, symbolically joyful yellow. The illustrator's soft focus renders Lili and Grandma a bit amorphous, but the blurred edges and subdued tones support Minchella's empathetic mood. Ages 2-5. (May)