TODAY, MAYBE

A mysterious and very Gallic (the author is French-Canadian) story with hints of Pippi Longstocking and Pooh without really being very like either. A little girl decides to "stop growing" and lives alone in a pretty cottage in the forest with her bird. She knows "how to make tea and bread-and-jam" and that she is waiting for someone. It’s not the pirates who burst in and steal a pot of jam. It’s not the great wolf to whom she tells a story that fills him “with new dreams” instead of eating her. It’s not the prince, although she gives him her bread-and-jam recipe, and it’s not the ugly witch. But when she wakes up one morning in spring, there is a scratch at the door. The illustrations are beautiful and a bit surreal in their angles and close-ups. Watercolor, gouache, oils and pencils make layers of color with depth and translucence. The girl herself wears a dress of sunflowers and lace, and she shows no fear of witch or wolf. She is waiting for a bear much patched and mended, with “eyes of gold and honey,” who has been searching the world for her. Adults could probably make many dreams and metaphors of this, but it is lovely in itself, with its promise of the power of story and imagination, and the wait for the perfect, sublime friend. (Picture book. 5-8)