NIGHT LETTERS

Lily goes out after dinner to read the night letters that her backyard friends—ants, rocks, trees—leave for her. Each short missive is printed in italics and signed ``very truly yours.'' The conceit is highly imaginative: Members of the vegetable, animal, and mineral world leave messages in, say, the dew glittering on the rock, the crumbs of bread left by ants, the flashes of fireflies. The text of LoMonaco's first book verges on poetry—especially in the beginning and the end; in projecting future, wintry nights, it becomes self-conscious before returning to the present tense. Chartier's conventional watercolors depict the natural world in realistic detail and are skillfully keyed into the text, especially when ``the clouds blush raspberry red'' and ``the sky fades to blackberry blue.'' (Picture book. 4-7)