A Mexican girl awakens at night to find a man stealing the lemons from her lemon tree. In trying to discover how to help her tree, which falls ill after the episode, the girl connects with a mythical wise woman, who teaches her a lesson in compassion. While the story is somewhat meandering, it contains some lyrical imagery, and the watercolor illustrations warmly depict the girl's home and village.

Rosalinda awakens one night to discover a person she calls the Night Man stealing the lemons from her favorite tree, which consequently sickens. To no avail, Rosalinda seeks advice from family and neighbors on how to save the tree. After she sustains the shock of seeing the Night Man selling her lemons in the market, Rosalinda is approached by La Anciana, the mythical wise woman who reputedly roams the earth healing things and helping them to grow. Rosalinda reverently follows La Anciana's suggestions and the tree produces large lemons overnight. Overjoyed at the recovery of her tree, Rosalinda shares her bounty and, in a shining example of grace, gives her last lemon to the Night Man and his ragged family with instructions on how to plant his own lemon trees. While this is a moving tribute to the need for compassion and forgiveness, some may want to explain further the story's ambiguous response to theft--that the man's desperate situation compelled him to steal--when sharing the book with children. Still, Fine offers a litigious world an inspiring example of the power of forgiveness, while Moreno's luminous watercolors gently depict rural life in Mexico.

Fine (Fantastic Flight) works a bit of wonder in an understated story with the powerful themes of regeneration and redemption. One night, a horrified Rosalinda spies a man picking all of the fruit from her carefully tended lemon tree. Soon afterward, the leaves begin to turn yellow, and Rosalinda seeks out help. When her grandmother tells her about La Anciana, the Old One, who "walks the countryside helping things grow," the child determines to find her. At the end of a day's search for La Anciana, Rosalinda sees the lemon thief selling her tree's bounty at market, while his wife rocks an infant nearby. At this point La Anciana magically appears: "Perhaps he had a need," she tells Rosalinda, and hands her a branch with directions to bind it onto the lemon tree. A miraculous transformation follows, and a grateful Rosalinda shares her plentiful new crop with her family and neighbors--and even the contrite thief, whom she instructs to plant the seeds. Fine's message is stronger for remaining implicit. Softly punctuated with the hues of the flower-filled Mexican countryside, Moreno's (Fiesta) watercolor and pastel images quietly convey the picturesque setting. Her attention to folkloric details helps bridge the story as it travels between realism and fairy tale. Ages 4-up. (Apr.)

K-Gr 3-Rosalinda wakes from a dream to see a dark figure stripping her lemon tree of its fruit. By the time she gets outside, the man is gone and the tree is languishing. The anguished child asks advice from Abuela, who suggests that she seek out La Anciana, a spirit of nature, healing, and wisdom. Rosalinda searches everywhere, but it is only after she sees the thief and his impoverished family selling lemons in the market that she meets the spirit. La Anciana gives Rosalinda a short lecture on understanding and compassion and a branch to tie onto the tree that night. The girl does so, and overnight the tree yields huge lemons, which she joyfully picks and distributes to her family and friends. She gives the last one to the thief with instructions to "Siembra las semillas. Plant the seeds." The story is satisfying on several levels. Justice and compassion are both served, and a way out is given to the thief, who occasions more pity than anger. Spanish words and phrases, gracefully defined in the text, add to the richness of the narrative. The primitive watercolor illustrations, long on bright color and strong line, augment the story beautifully. It could be effectively used with Alma Flor Ada's The Gold Coin (Atheneum, 1991) to provoke discussion about how understanding can create motivation for positive change.-Ann Welton, Terminal Park Elementary School, Auburn, WA