STONE AGE BOY

Waking after a sudden fall, a lad finds himself back in the Stone Age, where he’s taken in by a peaceful extended family of hunters, tries his hand at flint-knapping and gets a glimpse of marvelous cave paintings. In Kitamura’s cartoon art, the prehistoric folk look like members of a well-bathed hippie commune, but like the narrator, some young readers will by fascinated by the ingenious ways they shape stone, bone and wood into a variety of weapons, small decorations and tools. Waking up in the modern era after another fall, the child’s experiences are dismissed as dreams—but they affect him so deeply that he grows up to be an archaeologist. Dream or not, the journey makes an engaging, lightweight tale with enough prehistorical information to rate a short index. A good choice for armchair archaeologists and time-travelers alike. (Picture book. 6-8)