ONE STEP TWO...

Charlotte Zolotow's 1955 evocation of a two-year-old's simple, momentous discoveries during a walk to the end of the block has been slightly updated—the milkmanand-horse is replaced by a garbage truck, the hurdy-gurdy man gives way to a closer look at some daffodils-and completely redesigned and illustrated. The original Duvoisin book was printed throughout, many will recall, in spring colors—French blue, poppy red, daffodil yellow, new-grass green—and made its first appeal by its fresh, blooming look. Now we have conventional, vacant, naturalistically coloredin figures, on white pages, with just a little outlining to suggest the surroundings-a mode of illustration much better suited to older stories, in part because it does nothing other than illustrate the text. There's no parallel creative impulse here and, for the child, no parallel visual experience. Since even the drawing is weak, moreover, there's very little to draw a child into the book or to convey a sense of wonderment at the little girl's discovery of a cat, a bird, a pebble, and so on. It's still endearing, but not fulfilling.