CITY SEEN FROM A TO Z

In Isadora's urban alphabet, ""Art"" is pictured as an outdoor brick-wall mural of the UNICEF-card school; ""Beach Bail"" is placed in a Coney Island-ish bathing scene complete with fat woman in foreground; and Car Wash, with more humor, shows kids spraying a passing car from a hydrant. Though G is for Gallery, with two older women viewing an abstract sculpture, most of the entries are actual street scenes--from the obvious Roller Skates (on a black kid in a hip cap) and Pigeon (in Chinatown) to the less expected interpretations of Entrance (down to a subway station), Music (a kid's big black box), Lion (pictured on the bock of a boy's shirt), and Zoo (two boys' chalk drawings on the sidewalk). In general, though, Isadora sacrifices the buzzing vitality of city life for solitary, resting, sitting, pensive figures, and there are some still shots (Kitten, Snowman) with no human presence. The quiet moments she favors might be more effective as tests between more active or dynamic scenes. Still, there are those small jolts of recognition as in Music, and Isadora always has a nice feel for the easy postures of kids oust hanging out, as on the cover.