THE SUN'S ASLEEP BEHIND THE HILL

The sun shone/in the sky all day./ The sun grew tired/ and went away."" With those quiet, arresting lines begins an Armenian lullaby reconceived here in spacious, deep-toned pictures--with insets at alternate openings to illustrate the refrain (""The sun shone/ in the sky all day./ The sun grew tired/ and went away/ to sleep behind the hill""). As the twilight deepens, the leaves, the bird, and the squirrel each grows tired and seeks rest; and when the little boy (glimpsed from the first flying his kite) grows tired in turn, his mother carries him homeward--while the moon rises from behind the hill, sings its solitary song, and, on the last wordless page, shines into the little boy's room (where the kite hangs on the wall). That particular scene, potentially a children's-book clichÉ, has instead a wondering, timeless feel. Altogether a simple, reverberating entity.