THE WILLOW UMBRELLA

Ashley assumes that a rainy day means playing indoors, but Rebecca, arriving under a sunny yellow umbrella, has a better idea: they can walk in the rain. In the imaginative idyll that follows, the two enjoy the sensations of a warm, wet day when ``The sidewalk is shiny like a gray satin sash,'' the rain sounds like ``tiny horses galloping'' on the umbrella, and every blossom is covered with drops like ``tiny glass beads.'' Finally, the girls make hollyhock dolls and float them in the overturned umbrella, under the weeping willow where it's dry. There's some poetic license in this—the water-loving willow doesn't really keep its roots dry in a downpour—but the girls' intentness and delight are charming, as are Stock's wonderfully liquid and luminous watercolors, where the light and color look as if they have been filtered through wet glass. Like Karen Williams's Gallimoto (1990), also illustrated by Stock, an unusually appealing depiction of creative play. (Picture book. 4-8)