GREGORY COOL

The widely praised illustrator of Mary Hoffman's award- winning Amazing Grace (1991) and Rita Phillips Mitchell's Hue Boy (1993) depicts an American boy's first visit to his grandparents in Tobago. Binch captures Gregory's initial disorientation with a straightforward text that incorporates the lilt of island speech in its dialogue and with beautiful watercolors. Gregory's acclimatization is predictable, but satisfying. He's never seen a home like his grandparents' small, tin-roofed cottage on concrete stilts; food like ``bake and buljol'' (bread and saltfish) seems inedible; and even a trip to the beach isn't what he expects with its lack of ice cream vendors and the view of dolphins that he initially supposes are sharks. His lithe cousin Lennox, too, is so different that the boys don't make friends at first, but of course in the end they do. Upbeat and authentic. (Picture book. 4-10)