THE SHEPHERD BOY

The parable of the shepherd who goes back to find one lost sheep, with a Native American boy as shepherd. Franklin's simple, cadenced retelling (also available in Spanish—ISBN: 0-689-31918- 5) unobtrusively suggests the new setting (``each day in the summer,/when school is out,/when the rains bless the ground,/when Father/digs in the garden/and Mother/weaves in the shade,/Ben leads the sheep/to a place/where green grass grows''). But Kastner's freely rendered oil paintings are the glory of this book; her full-bleed art, in panoramas extending nearly across the broad spreads, draws the reader into luminous canyons and evokes the Southwest's wide horizons; a decorative border with a Navajo motif divides the illustrations from a text that's imposed on the same canvas that gives the art texture—a design that enhances Kastner's best illustrations to date. A highly appropriate transposition for a particularly resonant story. (Picture book. 3-8)