Post Card Passages

From her childhood in the early 1950s until she embarks on her own journeys in 1967, Susan receives postcards from Great-Aunt Gladys, an inveterate world traveler. The girl responds in notes sent to Gladys's Oklahoma home--and, in her diary, she records her dream of someday touring the globe (``Tonight I'm going to sleep with the post card on my heart and imagine it is a magic carpet that will fly me over the mountains and across the seas to England''). The correspondence and Susan's diary entries are superimposed against a background of child-like art and postcard photos--some intentionally blurred. Occasionally presented in collage format, the pictures offer glimpses of many alluring sites. However, a good number of the photos are of Gladys; like amateur slide shows, they have only limited appeal. Similarly, the older woman's descriptions of her travels lack the youthful, personal perspectives found in more vibrant travelogues for children, among them Anni Axworthy's recent Anni's Diary of France . Ages 8-up. (May)