THE HUMMINGBIRD GARDEN

As twilight falls, the ``hummingbird lady'' calls the hummingbirds to sip nectar in her garden before they fly to their nests at dusk. Then a child who's been watching over the fence comes into the garden and sees what looks like a last hummingbird near the porch light; the lady explains that this is a ``hummingbird moth'' (actually, a sphinx moth), and switches off the light so it's free to return to the garden. The best feature here is Ransome's lovely profusion of flowers—a nice balance between impressionistic vistas and realistic depictions of species (though it's a bit of poetic license to show these all together)—but his figures are uneven in quality. The child is sometimes awkwardly painted and looks too old for the story; there's a nice portrait of the blue-jeaned lady, but Ransome seems (not unreasonably) to find waving a petunia to attract the birds faintly foolish. A slight, somewhat implausible idyll. (Picture book. 4-8)