WALK A GREEN PATH

Lewin draws readers into a celebration of the green path with brief poetic reflections and full page watercolors of growing things encountered around the world. She ably demonstrates the range of her medium. Watery brushstrokes of heavy, muted, overlapping blue-green evoke a tropical vista, accompanied by her comment, ``The rain forest holds its breath, waiting for the downpour.'' In another vignette she details the hair-like fairy world of tiny plants sprouting from a dead stump, floating on the mirrorlike surface of a lake in upstate New York. Some of the statements are slyly humorous, as in ``Backyard Angel'': ``I wonder if, when I'm not there, he talks to the pill bugs, the periwinkle, and the Little People?'' The watercolor scene shows dappled sunlight on an urban garden with terra cotta pots and a concrete angel perched on an iron step. Regardless of the visual focus, however, most of the writing is intensely, compactly personal, giving readers the impression that they are tagging along Lewin's trail, whether in an exotic locale or just pottering around the backyard. An invitation to the flora of the world, wherever it may be found, for artists, poets, and naturalists. (Picture book. 5-10)