WHERE THE SUNRISE BEGINS

It may be that knowing this is another offering from the author of Old Turtle (1992, illustrated by Cheng-Khee Chee) is all one needs for a decision to buy. Married to Popp's soft and luminous pastel-and–conte crayon images are equally soft and occasionally luminous wisps of prose. The world is always “turning toward dawn,” but the mountaintops are not where sunrise begins. Nor is it the treetops, the sea, the Far East or “our own native land.” The answer will be familiar in its sentimentality: “[T]he sunrise begins in you.” Some who find this unbearably saccharine may be somewhat mollified by the prettiness of the pictures: A barefoot girl feeds chickens, a boy builds a sand mountain and so on, all against great washes of sky, land and water in the pearly colors of dawn. Others may find it just too difficult to accept prose with such phrases as “in a land known as Holy” or “drowsy ducks / … speak in soft, murmuring tones about / the things that ducks know.” Readers probably already know if they will love this or not. (Picture book. 5-9)