THE VISIT

It would take a hard heart indeed not to love Halperin’s signature watercolor-and-pencil illustrations with their dulcet colors. They have the architecture of altarpieces, with a large, half-round frame surmounting a frieze of smaller images. Lindbergh’s verse, four lines per spread, with the first and last line the same, seems as artless as this siblings’ trip to a family farm, sweetened into gossamer memory. Two sisters, Jill and Beth, go for a visit to their aunt and uncle’s farm. There are biscuits and honey, nooks and crannies inside and out, flowers and berries, sheep, cows and barn cats. At night, with “fireflies and stars,” when Beth hears a noisy freight train and a singing thrush, she misses her parents and is comforted in the gentlest way by Jill. It’s a remembered dream of a farm, where everything is rosy and the kitchen always smells of baking. The relationship between “tall sister” and “small sister” is charming and tender, and the poetry is rhythmic without being clunky. (Picture book. 3-7)