A Sky Full of Kites

The sherbet-toned watercolors are a proper herald of this book's content. Like a tasty frozen confection, Molarsky's (Song of the Empty Bottles) story is appealingly sweet and easily digested but short on nourishment. Colin, an Asian American boy in San Francisco, paints a huge picture and aches to share it with people. He brings it to school, a fire station, a museum and other public places, but no one will hang his work. Finally, when he fashions a mammoth kite out of it, the city and its media, for some reason, take notice; suddenly the museum finds a home for his artwork. Colin's persistence and problem-solving are certainly admirable and the watercolors cheery enough, but the story as a whole comes off as artificial and shallow. The adults' behavior, from their supercilious rejections of Colin's painting to their improbable adulation at the end, points up the one-dimensional quality of the writing. Surely this boy's challenge to adult indifference could have yielded more depth, drama and impact than is delivered here. Ages 5-8. (Mar.)