CAN A COAL SCUTTLE FLY?

An exuberant and frolicsome look at the life and development of an African-American artist. Through a first-person narration created by Murphy, Miller explains, just as if he were sitting in the room with readers, how color was central to him from earliest childhood. At age ten, he took a discarded and useless old household fixture and painted it with ``eyes and claws and feathers,'' turning the coal scuttle of the title into a bird. The coal scuttle is obviously a key image in his life: He describes his first days at the Maryland Institute of Art as feeling ``a little bit like the coal scuttle . . . dark and dented and in the wrong time and place.'' The art, in Miller's ``Afro Deco'' style, consists of bright, flat planes of saturated color in lively geometric shapes, with a whiff of Matisse in the jigsaw patterns. Fun to look at, fun to play with, a fine addition to the growing list of books for children that describe art as a viable and important career choice. (Picture book. 4-8)