Ichikawa's gentle, old-fashioned watercolors are in a style usually scaled to a smaller format (think of Martha Alexander--though these are straighter and more traditionally European), and her text, a rhyming seasonal catalog of children's everyday pastimes, is too unobtrusive--and unremarkable--to serve as anything more than a series of captions. But her homey, bucolic scenes--of playroom, schoolyard, field or country road, all brimming with children at play--are filled with enough warmth, tranquility and natural bloom to occupy the oversize pages. This is no story hour page turner, but a visual pleasure for slow, closeup savoring.