TIME TO GET OUT OF THE BATH, SHIRLEY

Through a bathtub drain astride a rubber duck is an unlikely route to a medieval fantasy—for one thing most children's fantasies about drains are nightmares and for another bathrooms and jousting fields haven't the natural association of the pirate ship and beach in Come Away From the Water, Shirley (1977). But then Shirley's imagination never did run in conventional channels, and here she has a glorious time on land with knights on horseback and in the water with a king and queen who blow up their rubber ducks to join her in the moat. Burningham's unobtrusively mixed media and techniques on the fantasy pages are splendidly suited to the purpose, and there are some subtly amusing interactions with the facing sketches of Shirley's mother back tidying up in her prosaic bathroom. (More so than the old poop on the beach, she could be any mother.) Sparkling.