EMMA'S STORY

Skillful paintings help offset a tepid narrative in this latest addition to the growing collection of foreign adoption tales. Hodge, a Canadian author of children's nonfiction, introduces Emma, who's upset to realize she looks different from her family. Grandma nestles with her in a cozy floral armchair, an Asian folding screen in the background, and recounts how Emma's parents traveled to China to adopt a longed-for daughter. The lengthy, linear narration, with its familiar adages ("It's not how we look that makes us a family.... It's how we love each other"), is buoyed by realistic, detailed illustrations. Zhang (A Little Tiger in the Chinese Night ) employs a myriad of textures and motifs in blankets, wallpaper and clothing in his compositions, most of them approached from a frontal perspective, like photographs in a family album. The layout balances text and art neatly, allotting the illustrations about four-fifths of the spread and boxing the text within a spacious column that is decorated with a motif from the facing art. All told, however, this lacks the emotional charge of such similarly themed works as Rose Lewis and Jane Dyer's I Love You Like Crazy Cakes or the accessibility of Kes Gray and Mary McQuillan's Our Twitchy (Children's Forecasts, Oct. 20). Ages 4-8. (Oct.)