PILOT MOM

Children of the military—and those of pilots in particular—may find kinship with this middling story's conflicted protagonist. Narrator Jenny Strom and her best friend, K.C., spend a morning with Jenny's mother before she leaves on a training mission. Although proud of her "smart, brave, calm mom, who is also a pilot," Jenny's worries dominate the story (and they may raise the anxieties of readers as well): "I pictured her flying over the ocean, where if something should happen, she would be alone in cold, deep water." Like Jenny's friend K.C., airplane lovers will lock in on Duble's (Bridging Beyond) story's best feature—aeronautical details, including aspects of the mother's uniform and equipment, plus the woman's stories of a scary landing and a Saudi control tower's refusal to acknowledge a woman pilot. Marks's (Planet Zoo) light-toned watercolors offer many realistic renderings of the planes and the inside of a cockpit. Unfortunately, characters fare less well, looking amateurish and somewhat inconsistent from one spread to the next. A tacked-on ending—Jenny decides she doesn't want to be a pilot but does want to be a mom—elicits a perfunctory response ("That's the finest job I know, Jenny"). Ages 4-9. (July)