ZOE SOPHIA’S SCRAPBOOK

Nine-year-old Zoe Sophia and her dachshund Mickey visit her great aunt Dorothy Pomander, who lives in Venice. Zoe Sophia writes about her plane ride, Dorothy’s apartment with the Chagall, visiting the Accademia, the mask shop, and riding in a gondola with Ludovico, the gondolier. Alert readers will note that the omnipresent Mickey doesn’t make it into the gondola. Zoe Sophia panics, but Ludovico retrieves the dog. La Fenice and Murano complete Zoe Sophia’s week, and she goes home with Venetian gifts for all. A few Italian words add spice to the text, and the back endpaper is quite a nifty collage of tickets and receipts such as one gets all over Italy. Watercolor-and-ink pictures do better by architecture, both New York and Venetian, than by figures, rendered waggishly with pin-dot eyes, round heads, and pointy features. Zoe is a lively companion, but there’s more Venice deliziosa in Christina Bjork’s Vendela in Venice (1999) or all of Italy in Carol Weston’s The Diary of Melanie Martin or: How I Survived Matt the Brat, Michelangelo, and the Leaning Tower of Pizza (2000). (Picture book. 6-9)