BOOK REVIEW / Bookshop Window: Isabella's bed - Alison Lester: Oxford, pounds 6.95.

Anna and Luis often go to stay with their grandmother, and they always sleep in the same grand bed. One day gran sings a mournful song about Isabella, the owner of the bed, who had her heart broken long ago when her lover drowned in the Crooked River. That night, the bed takes off and flies off over deserts, along moonlit lakes, through ancient ruins and past whirlpools. In the end it settles in front of a giant waterfall. It's an ideal flight: no boring safety instructions, no funny thickness in your ears and a smooth landing. The illustrations conjure up a series of flighty bedroom scenes which might make the real thing seems dangerously mundane, though a triteness in the ending deflates the magic that has gone before.