THE SMALL WORLD OF BINKY BRAVERMAN

In this book's magnetic preface, white-haired Stanley Braverman goes to pick up an inheritance from his late aunt. He finds his childhood clothes in the guest room of her empty house. "The pocket of a sailor suit still contained a wad of bubble gum. As the flavor swirled over Stanley's tongue, a forgotten summer flooded back as if sixty-five years was a wink on the smiling face of time." The Proustian gum takes Stanley back to 1938, when his parents, who are expecting a baby, send him to stay with his aunt in Memphis. But Stanley (aka Binky) prefers getting muddy in a rural swamp to wearing a suit and playing gin rummy. Late one night, Binky hears voices ("Oh, stay with us." "Yes, stay!"). Tiny characters, including the banjo player on a matchbox and the daredevil from a box of playing cards, have sprung to life to keep him company. Max and Ruby author Wells's plot strongly recalls Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden, in which another isolated boy accesses a miraculous world. Egielski's (Buz) sepia watercolors of the red-haired Binky, yellow-patterned wallpaper and old-fashioned kitchen and bath products reinforce the sense of a past American lifestyle. At the conclusion, Binky remains in the 1930s and leaves readers wondering about his 2003 self: having revisited his "small world," how does he awaken in the present day? This tantalizingly open-ended tale, especially its poignant introduction, explores the overlap between memory and imagination. Ages 5-8. (Sept.)