SOMEPLACE ELSE

``All her life'' Mrs. Tillby has lived in the same country house, wondering what it would be like to live elsewhere. At last she climbs into her old green truck and takes off; she visits her children in the city, at the seaside, in the mountains, then tries living alone in forest and desert. Each time she moves on, missing that feeling of being home and not knowing what she wants. On her way back to her first house, she sees a small silver trailer, and it's love at first sight; she hooks it to the pickup, and from then on, wherever she travels, ``Mrs. Tillby is always home, and she is always someplace else.'' About, and perhaps for, adults, this story may leave many readers unmoved. Hazy golden light suffuses Root's tidy, comfortable gouaches; Mrs. Tillby is a well-kept, silver-haired figure, going her own way without fuss. Saul (Peter's Song, 1992, not reviewed) never develops the layers of experience that make Barbara Cooney's Miss Rumphius (1982) or Gloria Houston's My Great- Aunt Arizona (1992) so special; the theme of home not necessarily being linked to a particular place is explored in a more explicit way in Floyd Cooper's Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes (1994). Endearing, but also remote. (Picture book. 7-9)