cover image Treasure Sock Tr

Treasure Sock Tr

Pat Thomson. Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, $8.95 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-385-29600-7

Part of the Share-a-Story series, this is the exchange between a girl who keeps stumbling across ""found'' objects and her mother. The girl stuffs each item into her socka key, a marble, a brass button, a small pink pig made of plastic, a used handerchief, among others. The sock is stretched-out and dirty, and so goes into the wash. Some of the objects she keeps, others she throws away. Ross's pictures are savagely funny, and show both the real events and some imaginative possibilities. However, they are hung on a question-and-answer format that may leave readers cold. The book is intentionally set up in this way, to help create a dialogue between adult and child readers. But the storyline is so flat that the book may well be shared once and quickly forgotten. Ages 4-7. (November)