In this picture book for older children, Browne's beautiful surreal imagery reveals a child's terror in ordinary life. A young boy wakes up one morning to find that Dad is gone. There is emptiness everywhere. When sad Mom asks the boy to take a cake to Grandma, he chooses the forbidden path, and he is lost in the wood. The clear pencil pictures of the forest, with only the boy in bright watercolors, show bare, shadowy trees full of frightening spikes, gaping holes, and branches like thick tentacles. As his journey progresses, the boy encounters contemporary kids in elemental fairy-tale roles-- among them, Red Riding Hood and a bespectacled brother and his sobbing sister who have been abandoned by their parents. Finally, the boy knocks on the door of Grandma's cottage--and finds Dad inside. As with most fairy tales, there's a huge turnaround at the close--a happy return home, presented in glowing color. The power of the story is in the fearful detail that reveals the child's nightmare of being forsaken. Readers older than the elementary-school audience may want to talk about the story's connection to timeless fairy tales such as "Hansel and Gretel" as well as its psychological underpinnings. Hazel Rochman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved