ONE ROOM SCHOOL

An affectionate paean to his one-room schoolhouse turns Pringle (Elephant Woman, 1997, etc.) into everyone's favorite uncle, telling stories about when he was a child. They are engaging tales, full of small details that children will love: Helen, who was the only third grader, then the only fourth grader, etc., through most of her school years; the boys' outhouse was farther away than the girls' so boys had more time outdoors; the teacher's floral print dresses and Tabu perfume. Garrison's illustrations are richly textured prints in the soft, blurred colors of memory. She frames them in the white deckled edges and corners of old photographs, so readers know that it is Pringle's remembrance of school in the last year of WW II that is captured in this evocative ``album.'' (Picture book. 6-10)