A painter and her son visit the small but beautiful island of Sardinia. While the woman paints the mountains, hills, bays and sheep, her son Paolo is as free as the wind. One day a shepherd offers them fogli di musica pages of music, a thin, hard bread. When the mother offers to pay him, the shepherd laughs, takes out his pipe and fills the air with sweet music. At last they leave the island, and as they sail to the mainland, Paolo says that one day he will go back. Many years later, after he has become a famous composer, Paolo remembers the shepherd and the beautiful music. He decides to return to the island, but he does not go alone. Instead, he takes an entire orchestra with him. The musicians, with their instruments, go to the church and there they wait for the shepherds who will go there for the Christmas service. When the shepherds arrive the musicians begin to play, and Paolo shares with them his fogli di musica. DePaola and Johnston have previously collaborated on The Quilt Story and The Vanishing Pumpkin. Once again the crisp, succinct text and dePaola's distinctive folk-art illustrations blend to create a warm and joyous book. Ages 5-8. (Oct.)

K-Gr 4 Long ago, the story goes, a painter and her young son visited Sardinia. The shepherds share their olives, cheese, and fogli di musica, the unusual provincial bread, thin and hard as sheet music. When the boy, Paolo, is grown, he returns to the island with an entire symphony orchestra to play the Christmas composition that he has written in honor of his beloved island and its shepherds. The grave and antique nature of Sardinia is nicely captured in dePaola's familiar, simplified, flat paintings, while Johnston's rhythmic story is a pleasure to read aloud. Nonetheless, there are a few problems with this picture book. The plot is fragile, resting too much on the pun in the title, so that the book does not have the impact of other Johnston/dePaola collaborations. Waverly Root, in The Food of Italy, calls fogli di musica `music-paper bread,' because its unleavened sheets are so thin, and also because it tends to develop long cracks on its surface which suggest the lines of the staff.'' This book explains it asa thin, hard bread.'' Shepherds, of course, have a close association with the Christmas story. However, the shepherd theme is not developed enough to make this picture book more than an additional choice for most Christmas and general collections, although communities with a heavy Italian-American population may want to purchase it. Anna Biagioni Hart, Sherwood Regional Library, Alexandria, Va.