I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS

The first half of this depiction of a child's intensity in imagining an upcoming visit to a dying uncle (a former pilot) is a fantasy beginning with ``If she were a skywriter'' and going on to detail the girl's piloting a plane to write a message across a beautiful sunset: ``Good-bye—I love you—I'll see you in my dreams.'' Then, still in a poignant conditional tense, Jukes describes what may really happen (``her mother would say, `He might not even know you're there' ''); though only ``a little kid,'' the child resolves to brave the uncertainties because she would know she was there, and she'd know what to say. In her handsome, richly expressive paintings, Schuett realizes both the fantasy and the imagined reality in saturated sunset colors that grow deeply shadowed in the realistic conclusion. Expressing with unusual strength the complexity a child's thoughts may have at such a time, a deeply felt book with potential for comforting or for opening communication. (Picture book. 5-10)