LUMINA

Wintz-Litty's watercolors, with their intimate nighttime village scenes and wild landscapes, are splendidly bleak as poor Lumina's sad story unfolds: She is parentless, homeless, hungry, and shunned by her countryfolk—``Go away, little beggar girl!''- -as the snowballs rain down on her head. She has the clothes on her back and from her mother, a lantern, but it—the sum total of her security and warmth—is cruelly extinguished by a gust of wind. A pack of wolves menace her, an old owl provides guidance, and suddenly Lumina spies a light in the distance. She is invited home for Christmas Eve supper and is taken into a family's warm embrace as a new member of the household. After so many pages of pure agony, readers will be dazed by and suspicious of this particular turn of events—at least The Little Match Girl delivers a good cry. (Picture book. 5-9)