SOLOMON'S SECRET

Everyone on the street of row houses is afraid of old Mr. and Mrs. Zee, with their overgrown yard and strange music. But Solomon knows better: once, when his dad sent him to their house with homemade rolls to share, Mr. Zee took him to get more treats for tea. From the backyard, they followed panda prints to China for tea itself, a tiger trail to India for jalebis, and even stopped in the US for pumpkin pie. Solomon and his kindly, misunderstood neighbors are characters with possibilities; Cooper brings their imaginative excursion from a drab, interracial British city street to the exotic ends of the earth to lustrous life in her engagingly detailed illustrations. But the story is slight, its conclusion abrupt.