POND YEAR

The author (Days of the Dead, 1994, etc.) of many fine science titles recounts a quiet adventure from her own childhood up in Indiana. With her best friend, Carole, the narrator plays in and around the pond ``out back and down the hill from our house.'' She shares the secrets of the pond beginning in April as the girls gather twigs and build tiny rafts, describes tadpole time in June, pond scum in August, black ice in November, and the cycle of another year. The memories are evocative, and full of careful child- centered observations. The soft watercolor paintings are delicately fluid, with light and water shimmering, running, rippling. Bostock is more comfortable with the plants, animals, and pond than with his human subjects, who are stiff and awkward. The whole, however, is a treasured memory of a gentler, more peaceful time, a book for sharing and remembering. (Fiction. 4-8)