The Watering Can

“On the street the possibilities are endless,” Baer (The Book in the Book in the Book) writes, as Dorléans (Our Fort) shows pale-skinned child Nina walking alongside buildings, keeping an eye out for treasure. A yellow watering can in a stoopside pile catches her eye: she could make use of it, she thinks (“Nina’s teacher is passionate about the environment,” slyly humorous text explains). When Nina takes the can back to her family’s fourth-floor apartment and waters a plant, the plant instantaneously becomes room-size, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland-style. Nina stays cool in the face of the event and her parents’ absence, and further experiments, on other entities and using varied water temperatures, suggest that she has some control over the outcome. By the time her mother returns, Nina has found a clever way to restore everything to its normal state—and soon finds more possibility elsewhere. It’s a sorcerer’s apprentice tale, but with a logician’s twist: Nina’s observation and analysis keep things more or less in check. Background characters are portrayed with pale skin. Ages 4–7. (Mar.)