Where's Our Mama?

In a crowded Paris train station some 60 or so years ago, Mama goes in search of her lost hat, instructing her two wide-eyed children to wait for her. When these fetching enfants --with identical socks stretched up to knobby knees and tams pulled down over foreheads--begin to cry, a gendarme offers assistance. On the basis of the children's descriptions of their mother, the kindly fellow mistakenly approaches some delightfully unlikely candidates, including a newspaper vendor, an opera singer, a baker and a lion tamer. At last there is a joyous reunion, and the children's faces--strikingly full of feeling throughout--are finally content. Always a treat, Goode's ( Watch the Stars Come Out ; The Diane Goode Book of American Folk Tales & Songs ) typically angular, eloquent characters contrast splendidly with the appealing simplicity of her text. Here the colors and style of her finely detailed period art bring to mind the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec. Even the book's exquisitely patterned endpapers, delicate typeface and stylish, ruled borders are luscious bonbons. Ages 3-7. (Sept.)