``I CAN'T TAKE YOU ANYWHERE!''

Amy Audrey Perkins, the pint-sized protagonist of this picture book from Naylor (Saving Shiloh, p. 1114, etc.), is a fumble-fist. She spills things or knocks them over, loses her balance, blunders; she's such a public embarrassment that, despite her pleas, she gets left behind when others go out. When Aunt Lydia's wedding looms, Amy Audrey isn't sure she will be invited (a very real menace of abandonment lurks beneath the story's surface). She does get the invite, breezes through the wedding without a hitch, and watches as the tables turn: All the other family members are reduced to stumblers and bumblers. Naylor doesn't try for cleverness as she goes straight to the heart of the matter: Everyone goofs up occasionally. Kaminsky's characters—with their outsized heads, great doe eyes, and bad hair—have an immediate appeal, although Amy Audrey is the only one who, by her small stature, really stands out from the pack. (Picture book. 4-8)