OVER BACK

A young African-American shares her joy in the world out beyond her family's barn, where there are blueberries to eat, walls to climb, and sweet-smelling arbutus so fragrant that ``You have to smell the flowers and smell them again, the way you have to keep looking at a rainbow until it's gone.'' A creek for wading, frogs' eggs, and a ``slow and lumpy, bumpy'' cow to ride home all add up to a lyrical idyll of country life. Allen uses soft color pencil and watercolor (we're guessing) to depict the sunny summer scenes: bright with intense greens, enlivened with discrete outlines in red, gentle with remembered pleasure. He occasionally focuses on significant details (a toad, a dragonfly), but more often evokes a scene's sensory impact (the water's cold, etc.) with an impressionistic technique. A nourishing picture of one child's pleasure in the natural world. (Picture book. 5-10)