TIME OF WONDER

A picture book for all ages, geared to shared experience of Maine island vacations, with wide washes of water color tinged with McCloskey magic in words and pictures. Penobscot Bay provides the background; rain, fog and hurricane, in brush- work and lyric language provide the motives. The bay and the at peace are here, too. There is nothing particularly young, until there is the shared experience of packing and leaving at summer's end, as the text rounds out the summer pattern. There is nothing of the identification of specifically young reactions here, nor is there the warm humor of earlier books.