ZEEK SILVER MOON

From Zeek's first sleep in his mother's arms at the age of forty-seven minutes until the family moves to the country and plants a garden when he is five or so, ten quietly glowing moments in a sort of Whole Earth family album. Zeek picnics with his father and dances with his mother, watches his mother make bread while his father polishes his cowboy boots at the kitchen table, helps his musician father staple the living room carpet to the ceiling after Miss Bonnie Boss upstairs complains about the noise, and adopts a stray dog he calls Loosely, short for Loosely Put Together. The linguistic sophistication of the dog's name is just one indication that the book is as much about the parents' lifestyle as it is a child's-eye view of childhood's peak minutiae, but the tempered lyricism of the writing and the full-page pictures make their gentle simplicity so attractive that both children and parents will join Zeek's father in giving ""welcome to the coming spirit.