LYDIA JANE AND THE BABY-SITTER EXCHANGE

Another of Jonah Twist's third-grade classmates is featured in Honeycutt's series about a San Francisco neighborhood with the kind of lively kids, nice parents, and pervasive common sense and good humor that distinguish Cleary's Klickitat Street. Lydia Jane and her little sister have an amiable relationship; it's as much in Gabrielle's defense as her own that Lydia Jane undertakes a campaign to change their latest day-care arrangement, at a place where unimaginative Mrs. Humphrey's concern for safety squelches all but the most placid activity. An au pair is beyond the family's means, and Grandma—a former science professor who sympathizes with Lydia Jane's penchant for stimulating if often disruptive inquiry—has her own life to live; still, when Lydia Jane tries to enlist Grandma's aid, she urges a healthy, and feasible, solution. Meanwhile, Lydia Jane (obviously a handful) has skillfully negotiated with her busy parents (Mom's a welder); and pursued such activities as using the library to find out how to preserve raccoon tracks. An entertaining contemporary story that will find a ready audience. (Fiction. 7-10)