How Pizza Came to Queens: New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year

May, of My Family Vacation , is staying with her good friends Linda, Judy and Peggy Penny while her parents are away. The Penny family is visited by a distant cousin, elderly Mrs. Pelligrini, who walks through the kitchen door, sniffs the air and immediately declares, ``Is no good.'' The girls notice that the only time the elderly visitor is really happy is when she is cooking, and they all wonder about the mysterious ``pizza'' that Mrs. Pelligrini misses so much. ``Maybe it's her daughter . . . '' says one of the girls. ``Or her dog,'' ventures another. When the girls learn, at the library, the meaning of the word pizza, they copy the list of ingredients and then go shopping. Mrs. Pelligrini, seeing the items the girls have assembled, flies into action, and soon the house is filled with the aroma of the bubbling, baking pie. This amusing story is embellished with Khalsa's intensely colored paintings in her vigorous primitive style, each one brimming with details of family life a few decades ago. The delicious-looking endpapers depict pizza pies falling from a beautiful blue sky. Ages 6-9. (May)