I recently had cause to recall a formative novel of my young adolescence, Edward Ormondroyd’s David and the Phoenix. Assuming it to be long out of print, I did an online search and was heartened to find that this title was reissued in 2000 by Purple House Press, which specializes in children’s classic tomes.In the opening of this comic and touching novel, a preadolescent boy moves with his family to a house situated just in front of a majestic mountain. Climbing the peak at his first opportunity, the young David literally crashes into a vain, preening, and somewhat fusty talking bird of archetypal origins: “I daresay my name is familiar to you, celebrated as it is in song and story. I am the one and only, the Unique, Phoenix.” Boy and bird soon take off on various fast-paced adventures involving witches, fauns, sea monsters, Gryffins, Gryffons, Gryffens and — most terrifying of all — the Scientist, who desires to kill or capture the great bird for his collection. As the 500th birthday of the Phoenix approaches, he instinctively begins building his own funeral pyre, relying on David to provide him with the necessary matches and cinnamon to immolate himself properly. When a new Phoenix arises from the ashes, it is David who must help him escape in the nick of time from the encroaching Scientist.

This is a heartwarming and often hilarious story that reminds me of the later modern fairy tales written by John Gardner in The King’s Indian. It should provide parents with the perfect clean and inspiring read-aloud story to any but the most jaundiced of young videogamers. Bravo to Purple House for keeping this and other classics of kidlit alive.— P.MILLER

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Vegetable Dreams/Huerto Soñado

by Dawn Jeffers; illustrated by Claude Schneider;
    translated by Eida de la Vega

Raven Tree Press

ISBN: 0-9741992-9-X

32 pp., hardback
$16.95

This story starts where many good ones do: with a dream so enticing that the dreamer can only follow it. Young Erin’s dream is of a beautiful garden, with “huge red tomatoes full of seeds and juice” and “corn...as tall as the house.” When her parents sensibly point out that a garden is too much work for one little girl, their next-door neighbor, old Mr. Martinez, comes to the rescue with an offer to teach Erin gardening skills if she’s willing to share the labor with him. Inevitably, age and youth find a common meeting ground among the seeds and the hoe, and especially in Mr. Martinez’s stories of his childhood — and when harvest time arrives, it yields much more than vegetables.

People who love to market and garden and cook know about the beauty of vegetables, whether it’s garnet-colored gypsy peppers or lettuce as green as jade, and Claude Schneider’s impressionist pastels capture that aesthetic: drenchingly ripe tomatoes and carrots and cucumbers shimmer on the page, as does the haze of summer heat and the pleasure of friendship. Unfortunately, his style outshines the text, for while Jeffers has written a charmingly gentle story, she’s also committed the classic error of telling too much and showing too little. This reader would like to have heard one of Mr. Martinez ’s tales, rather than hear about them, and to have felt the lessons Erin learned, instead of being told what they were.

Nevertheless, Vegetable Dreams (a bilingual book with both English and Spanish text, including a gardening vocabulary) is still an engaging first effort, and Jeffers and Schneider make an effective team, one that will surely produce a more memorable book the next time around. — M.LAWRENCE

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