MASAI AND I

``I felt the tingle of kinship flowing through my veins,'' reports Linda of learning about the Masai in school. During the next two days, as she goes home to her apartment, shares dinner with her family, goes out to play until ``the streetlights turn on,'' and gets ready for school and later for a party for Grandma, she compares each activity with the way it would be if she were Masai. As imagination might, the nicely cadenced, poetic text idealizes the Masai experience (``I would stay out until the bats' caves echoed with empty silence, until the low, white moon glowed yellow and rose straight above, until whole flocks of flashing fireflies turned trees into lanterns''); the sensitively observed art, adroitly merging the two worlds in each scene, captures both with robust enthusiasm. (Picture book. 4-8)