LESTER'S DOG

The unnamed narrator shivers as he watches Lester's dog light out after a car—he's had his own run-ins with the big creature and knows better than to tangle with him. Then friend Corey drags the boy on a rescue mission; he locates a small, needy kitten, summons up the courage to bark back at Lester's fierce dog, and finally makes a welcome gift of the kitten to a lonely elderly neighbor. ``Garrison Avenue'' comes to life in Hesse's words and Carpenter's pictures, which reveal what the carefully framed text leaves to judicious understatement: Corey wears a hearing aid. Plotting is sharp and tight; radiant painterly vistas add such details as cracked sidewalks and broken latticework, and readers are left with the satisfying feeling that this is no idyll but a real neighborhood of the not-so- distant past—one where heroic efforts and happy endings are still possible. (Picture book. 4-7)