THE BIGGEST HORSE I EVER DID SEE

A story from Couture (Melanie Jane, 1996) with obvious promise—about the bonds that ripen between people and animals, and about the connection between continuity and place—that gives way to one simple, forgettable refrain. A little boy watches as a horse charges by, through a meadow and up a hill: ``Another horse was by his side/Galloping over the mountain/Galloping over the mountain in the morning.'' The boy grows up, the seasons change, and the presence of the horses, now harnessed, are one constant in a world in flux. The speculative nature of the text (``If I drove that splendid team'') makes all the events depicted in the illustrations part of the boy's less- than-childlike imaginings—a future in which he is married, balding, bespectacled, and stooped, showing the horses to his grandson on the last page. The pulsing repetition—``Galloping over the mountain in the morning''—is pleasantly hypnotic, but the narrative is too weak to support the refrain, rendering it little more than singsong. Ewart's pale watercolors valiantly attempt to convey the passage of time and communicate the love felt by the boy for those great, wild steeds. (Picture book. 3-7)