HONSCHI

The lovely sharp clarity of Tony Chen's pictures adds considerable lift to this ordinary story of Honschi, a Japanese chickadee who is at first reluctant to leave her nest but who then undergoes a series of adventures that take her farther and farther from home. She is caught by a boy in a rice field near her nest but flies from his grasp, is chased later by a shrike, tossed in a storm, and then imprisoned in a bamboo cage which she also escapes after several days, By this time the background of crisp poppy-red and yellow-orange flowers and abundant green leaves has given way to patchwork fields in warm golds and browns, and at last, when the trees are bare and the ground and rooftops a stark white, Honschi, who has returned alone to her nest, joins a flock of migrating china-blue chickadees and flies with them into the forest. It's worth going along for the attractive, changing scenery.