OREGON'S JOURNEY

The narrator and the bear meet at a circus in Pittsburgh. ``Take me to the big forest, Duke,'' Oregon suggests, and the little clown complies. Thinking of ``pine trees and rivers full of fish,'' the two travel westward from city mills and crowded highways—by bus, train, hitching, and on foot—to the mountains of Oregon's Oregon, where Duke—``light at heart, and happy''—at last discards his clown face. The beauty of this simple story of a companionable journey home is in the emotional power of its quietly lyrical narrative and, especially, its mixed-media art. Freely yet deftly applied, Joos's lush, shadowed colors bring his loosely scribbled figures to life; Duke's appealing vulnerability recalls the great Emmett Kelly, while the spare rendering of roadside scenes is truly a valentine to America. A lovely, poignant journey. (Picture book. 4-9)