LUNCH WITH MILLY

The young narrator invites Milly for lunch, but neglects to make dessert. Milly takes the narrator in hand and flies them both to the shore, where for the price of performing, they acquire dessert ingredients from sea creatures. This is an imaginative, though flaccid idea, with a storyline as minimal as Morse code but not as meaningful. Spowart's soft illustrations in scumbled pastel simply evanesce, like spun sugar in rain. Without sharper, more concrete words and images, this flight of fancy never really takes off. (Picture book. 3-7)