DAWN

One of those rarefied concoctions of portentous folk motifs that never quite coalesces into anything. The first-person text is calligraphic; the facing, full-page illustrations are most often in color, and in the jewel-like mode of miniatures—but some are soft black-and-white pencil drawings. There is no significance, either way. In the text, a father, once a boat-builder, tells his daughter how he nursed an injured Canada goose back to health; a woman appeared, asking if he needed a sailmaker, and proved to be a remarkable one; the two were married, their daughter Dawn was born, and the father built the three of them a sailboat ("the one that's yours now"); a customer wanted similar sails, the mother objected, then gave in; finishing the sails, she turned back into a goose. . . "plucking the last feathers from her breast and weaving them into sailcloth." On the last page, the text shifts into the third-person—and we're told that Dawn set off, "in the boat made for the three of us," to find her. Mawkish folderol—which probably would strike some girls (and lots of grownups) as appealingly romantic.