A PEDDLER'S DREAM
by Janice Shefelman & illustrated by Tom Shefelman
A classic immigrant success story with a protagonist more unusual in children's literature than in real life: a Lebanese American. Solomon Joseph Azar isn't fazed by his four-week voyage: ``After all, the blood of seafaring Phoenicians flowed in his veins.'' Starting as a peddler, he soon gets a place in a shop and can return to Lebanon, in 1911, to fetch his betrothed; later, he inherits the store and, after a disastrous fire, is able to rebuild, bigger and better. The straightforward, well- researched story is attractively illustrated in pen and watercolor with a wealth of period details. (Picture book. 7-10)