Sara's City — Sue Alexander

Based on the author's own childhood, this collection of poems for very young children vividly captures the experiences of a young girl growing up in Chicago in the 1940s. Sue Alexander's brief, unrhymed vignettes and Ron Himler's exquisite watercolors follow the little girl as she eats her cinnamon-toast breakfast, carefully avoids sidewalk cracks on the way to school, sails paper boats in rainy- day puddles, rides the El downtown with Mama, and listens to her favorite radio program with Daddy before bedtime.