Little Girl in a Red Dress with Cat and Dog

If museum walls could talk, they might share something like this imaginative debut from both author and artist, inspired by a 19th-century painting by folk artist Ammi Phillips. In Nicholson's fantasy, the young subject of a Phillips portrait narrates a tale of life on her family's New York farm and how she came to pose for the artist. As the youngest in her family, the girl of the title has trouble finding anyone to pay attention to her (her father tends to his paperwork, her mother entertains the local ladies and her siblings work on their own projects), until Mr. Phillips arrives, brushes and palette in hand. Nicholson writes with a childlike clarity and immediacy, and accurately describes life for a bustling family of means in the 1800s. Including full-bleed paintings and framed vignettes, Buhler's illustrations, styled after folk art, integrate the patterns and weathered, painted wood textures common for the era. Buhler's subjects' jewel-toned clothing and countryside, and dusty brown farmyard provide a distinct sense of time and place. For youngsters at the threshold of the museum door, this volume invites them to view paintings as the result of an interaction between the artist and his subject, and for regulars, it may prompt them to see artwork in a new light. Ages 4-8. (Feb.)