Zilla Sasparilla and the Mud Baby

It will be a hardhearted parent who doesn't find a lump in her throat after reading this lyrical tale of a mother's love. Children, meanwhile (and little girls in particular), are certain to get caught up in the story's details of all the fussing and fretting that goes along with being a mommy. Pulling her lost shoe out of a mucky riverbank, a young woman named Zilla discovers that holding on to the other end is ""a slithery, mud-golden baby."" She becomes its devoted mother, bathing him in milk so he doesn't dry out in heat, and christening him Cinnamon ""because he is the color of a beautiful piece of cinnamon toast."" As Cinnamon grows up, Zilla fears the river will want her ""mud baby"" back, but he proves to her that the bond between them is unbreakable. Much of what makes the story magical--in both a literal and a literary sense--is its restraint: Gorog (No Swimming in Dark Pond) never explains where the mud baby comes from, and the love between Zilla and Cinnamon emanates from the way Zilla goes about the work of nurturing him: ""She fed him and changed him, bathed him and dried him. She told him rhymes on his fingers and his toes. She hugged him and kissed him, so glad that he was real."" The gentle lines and sweet humor of Harvey's (Stormy Weather) drawings underscore the subtle charms of the text, deepening the considerable poetry of the story. Ages 6-9. (May)