Amazon.com (ISBN 0689848366, Hardcover)

How could such a sweet little red-haired girl's mother accuse her of being wild? Worse still, how could she possibly make her sit in the time-out chair? That's precisely what this little girl wonders as she sits in the chair and lets her imagination (but not her manners, no way!) run wild: "If I were a lion,/ I'd growl and roar/ and knock the dishes/ on the floor./ I'd scare the hair/ right off the cat,/ but do you see me doing that?" Heather M. Solomon, also the illustrator of Clever Beatrice, captures the wildness in the little girl's mind in fantastic watercolor and gouache paintings. In the "growl and roar" spread, a ferocious lion is standing on two legs, open-jawed, in the ultra-artsy kitchen, breaking the dishes as the little girl looks on, wide-eyed and innocent. "Wild has feathers./ Wild has scales./ Wild has whiskers, tusks, and tails," she insists, surrounded by a made-up menagerie of owls, parrots, toucans, Old World chameleons, horned toads, snakes, walruses, seals, and fish in a bucket. We all know she protests too much: the title page reveals exhibit A--a childlike lion picture scrawled on the wall and a knocked-over cereal box. (Preschool to age 6) --Karin Snelson