Zebedee's Balloon

PreS-Gr 1—Translating poetry from one language to another is a tricky business at best, and this French into English attempt is not up to the task. Zebedee, a small unidentifiable forest creature, is attached to a red balloon, which is described as being "as soft as cotton wool." When it drifts away, Zebedee is devastated. He sees a series of red round objects in the night, but each one turns out to be something else—the eyes of an owl, flowers, strawberries, apples, etc. With each sighting, he makes a new friend, who then assists in the search. Zebedee never does find "Ball," but by the end he has 10 new pals. The repeated rhyme, "Together, as we search hard for Ball,/you will make not one but ten friends in all!" does not scan well, and there are numerous forced rhymes, such as "together" with "over there," "imagine" with "comfort him," "found" with "amount," etc. The woodcut illustrations are dark and dreary, and the page layout can be confusing as objects that are not naturally white appear that way to differentiate them from the night sky. A marginal purchase.—Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ