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June 21, 1998

Bookshelf


SANJI AND THE BAKER. By Robin Tzannes. Illustrated by Korky Paul. Oxford. $14.95. (Ages 5 and up) The setting is an exotic bazaar, but the funny story about greed and common sense could take place anywhere. Sanji, the upstairs tenant, tells the baker below how much he enjoys the smells wafting up, and the baker tries to charge him for the pleasure. The judge turns the tables. If you look closely at the comic drawings, there seem to be some modern characters -- a typist and an artist -- who could be the author and illustrator.

YOUNG, BLACK, AND DETERMINED: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry. By Patricia C. McKissack and Fredrick L. McKissack. Holiday House. $18.95. (Ages 10 and up) The American playwright was just 28 years old when ''A Raisin in the Sun'' was produced on Broadway and only 34 when she died in 1965. This thoughtful biography places her life and work in the political context of the changing times in which she lived. Useful time-line appendix.

ALICE AND ALDO. Written and illustrated by Alison Lester. Walter Lorraine/Houghton Mifflin. $15. (Ages 2 to 5) Here's a day in which Alice and her stuffed donkey, Aldo, do perfectly delightful, ordinary things, like have breakfast in bed, get clothes from the closet, leap in a leotard, paint a pink picture and yawn in their yogurt. Each alphabet-related activity is surrounded by other illustrated words starting with the appropriate letter. Aldo's a charmer.

GOOD-BYE, CHARLES LINDBERGH: Based on a True Story. By Louise Borden. Illustrated by Thomas B. Allen. Margaret K. McElderry. $16. (Ages 5 to 9) On a spring afternoon in 1929 in rural Mississippi, a boy on horseback was doing an errand for his mother when a sleek biplane set down in a field. Col. Charles A. Lindbergh was on his way from Mexico to New York City, and bad weather forced him to land and spend the night. This is the modest and engaging story modeled on that real boy, Harold Rea Gilpin, and the aviation hero. The soft colored-pencil illustrations capture the heavy weather, the storm and the bright morning that followed.

SMACK. By Melvin Burgess. Holt. $16.95. (Ages 12 and up) This grim and cautionary novel about Tar and his girlfriend, Gemma, runaway teen-agers and heroin use won the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Prize for fiction. The story is set in and around Bristol, England, during the 1980's.

WHO'S WHOSE? Written and illustrated by Jan Ormerod. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard. $16. (Ages 5 to 8) In an urban neighborhood with relaxed adults and lots of children of companionable ages, the permutations on who is where, doing what and with whom, and just what is whose are delightful. For starters, there are four parents, one granny, a total of eight children, a dog and a guinea pig. There is also a very independent cat.

RETURN TO HAWK'S HILL. By Allan W. Eckert. Little, Brown. $15.95. (Ages 12 and up) More than a quarter of a century after ''Incident at Hawk's Hill,'' that exciting novel set on the Canadian prairie in the 1870's, here is a sequel involving Ben MacDonald and George Burton, the evil trapper. Ben drifts down the Red River and into Lake Winnipeg in a rowboat without oars.

JUST A MINUTE! By Anke Kranendonk. Illustrated by Jung-Hee Spetter. Front Street/Lemniscaat. $14.95. (Ages 2 to 6) Mommy really ought to have paid attention to Piggy, who just wanted to hear a story or to play, because when Mommy finishes her household chores she discovers that Piggy has made a really glorious mess. Funny illustrations.

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Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
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