PLANE

A board book journey for the very young on a pleasurable plane ride through an intimate, minimal landscape. On each page, Demarest (Lindbergh, 1993, not reviewed, etc.) plants two words that have an ineffably mesmerizing quality``Plane lifts/Soars high/Down below/Towns lie''that can be read in a variety of tones and cadences. As a chant, the text has a powerful, surging effect; read with a lilt, the words impart the lulling sensation of flight. The woodcut-like illustrations are colored in lushly chromatic greens, reds, blues, purples, and yellows, with sharp black details and shadows. The little red plane tooling across the pages provides continuity and a sense of progress, though a few of the images fall short: the waterfall pours out of nowhere and a yapping dog is out of proportion to the circling plane. Never mind. This is a near- perfect marriage of the board book format to content, in this case, a small, snappy story that inspires dramatic readings out loud. A companion volume, Ship (ISBN 0-15-200267-7), does a similarly energetic job plying the high seas and evoking things oceanic. (Picture book. 1-3)