PAPER BOATS

Like Locker's paintings for a few words from Moby Dick (Catskill Eagle, p. 1091), a visual extension of a brief quote from a well-known author. ``Day by day,/I float my paper boats one by one,/Down the running stream,'' begins this quiet, gently philosophical poem by the winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature, who returned to teach in India after his British schooling. Like the Native American in Holling's Paddle-to-the- Sea (1941), this Indian boy imagines his frail craft's journey, but his thoughts are more imaginative—they concern the wind that also moves the clouds and ``the fairies of sleep'' that board the boats in his dreams. In a promising debut, Bochak provides attractive collages of torn and cut paper of various textures, arranged so that their shadows contribute to the careful compositions; her skillful blend of earth tones and sunset hues and the boy's posture and intent face effectively reflect the poem's ruminative flavor. Not an essential purchase, but an appealing idyll. (Poetry/Picture book. 3-8)