Drawson (Mary Margaret's Tree, 1996) tells a bittersweet, imaginative tale of a boy's bedtime flight, which comes at tooth- brushing time at the end of a happy day--his father's birthday. Dimitri has baked a cake and presented his father with a new tie, and he has in return been tossed in the air, ``just like when I was a little kid.'' But such festivities take very little time, and the house by the ocean in which father and son live is large, full of unfilled space. This emptiness extends to the boy's heart and so he soars over the ocean and to Mars, where he saves a beautiful lady from a dragon before something pulls him back home. The telling line of his journey, its reason for occurring, comes when he asks the lady, ``Are you my mother?'' His question darkens the book and erases the lady's gentle smile in one remarkable painting, sending him tumbling homeward to the father who tucks him in. The flight has failed, and perhaps all such flights are doomed to fail, but Dimitri declares himself happy to be homea situation shared by many readers and one that is sufficiently full to be satisfying. (Picture book. 4-7)
