MY MAMA SINGS

``My mama sings me no new songs./We get along with used tunes,'' begins this young African-American's lyrical description of Mama's melodies. There's one for daffodil time; ``the same soft blues/her mama taught her'' for hot summer nights; Grandpa's clicking cricket song when the leaves fall; an old commercial on laundry days. Then, when ``Mama's boss...sends her away,'' Mama stops singing; but the boy makes up a comforting new song, and even though Mama's still blue she sings it back to him. Lovely as an old song, Peterson's words are beautifully extended in Speidel's richly luminous pastel art, where the boy and his mother share work, music, and a sense of their family history in perfect amity. (Picture book. 4-8)