THREE CHEERS FOR CATHERINE THE GREAT!

Best (Last Licks, p. 297, etc.) offers a perfectly delightful celebration of a really great grandmother. In “the early blue of Grandma’s birthday morning,” as her mama wakes her and goes off to work, Sara hears all her neighbors going about their daily routine. Her Russian grandmother, whom Sara calls Catherine the Great, listens to Sara’s poems, comforts the neighbor’s baby by playing the Russian version of patty-cake, and cooks up a storm in preparation for her own birthday. She has mandated that there be “no presents!” but the neighbors and Sara’s mother know what to do; at the borscht-and-blintzes party, Mary Caruso sings Catherine’s favorite song, Mr. Minsky dances with her, one father, a hairdresser, does her hair, and Sara’s mother finds the picture of Catherine coming from Russia on a “big boat with a little suitcase.” Sara’s “no present” is a poem in English and an offer to teach her grandmother more. Joined here is lively language with exuberant pictures, showing, for example, the three floors of Sara’s building in cutaway, or a double-page close-up filled with the food on and company around Sara’s kitchen table. (Picture book. 4-8)