JOURNEY FROM PEPPERMINT STREET

In Meindert De Jong's small world--Siebrin's village, the neighboring district and Aunt Hinka's marsh--there is no stillness without implication, and, like the wheel on the school, the Journey from Peppermint Street is only an occasion--what matters is what happens every minute. So here is Siebrin, who's nine, freed from the tedium of amusing sick baby brother Kaillis by Grandfather's invitation to visit his little inland aunt in a monastery -- little because she is, inland in contrast to the sea, a monastery because it once was. It is night and Siebrin is a wayfaring stranger, now helping an injured dog, now helped over the embarrassment of open pants buttons. Withal there is Grandpa who is ""all kinds of things, stern and strict and teasing, sometimes even fun, then sometimes wonderful."" Whereas Aunt Hinka and her husband Siebrin, self-styled ""the biggest, deafest, dumbest uncle you ever saw,"" are always wonderful, and so are the two days he spends in the stone house with a cistern in the living room and a frog in the cistern. Then a tornado lifts the roof off, starting a series of occurrences that Siebrin calls miracles--and who's to deny it when he arrives home to find the dog safe and Knillis saying his name. Incandescent down to the least detail like Aunt Tinka's silly song for courage or the funeral for the rat who died dreadfully.