BOOK REVIEW : And a Child Shall Feed Them : FANNY AT CHEZ PANISSE <i> By Alice Waters (HarperCollins: $23; 132 pp.) </i>

Fanny has had an unusual upbringing. The 9-year-old daughter of Alice Waters, California chef extraordinaire , remembers spending time inside a huge empty stockpot on the stove at her mother’s restaurant. “They were just like little playpens for me,” she says. Years later, when a couple’s crying infant threatened to ruin their dinner at Chez Panisse, Fanny’s mom offered to watch the baby. So Fanny installed the child in a large salad bowl and then, because it looked so pretty, added bits of lettuce to the still life.

Her father teaches her how to appreciate a wine’s fragrance. Her mother has what Fanny calls emergencies, which can mean anything from tomatoes that are insufficiently ripe to a last-minute need for more olive oil; the errand-laden commute home from school often makes Fanny feel “like I’m in the middle of this driving stew.” She takes pride in her compost pile and knows to eat a clove of raw garlic when she’s feeling poorly.

Not your typical kid.

Nor your typical cookbook. First, there is the dreamy little conceit: No Marcella Hazan authoritatively telling you to grind your pesto by hand, but an airy, sometimes goofy little girl who likes to make guacamole because “you just mash up avocados.”

Waters has written the cookbook in Fanny’s voice--a series of anecdotes and reminiscences and 46 recipes from the redoubtable Mademoiselle F. This lopsided collection of Fanny’s favorites includes two fish dishes, two chicken dishes (if you count homemade broth), five tomato-based recipes and three garlic concoctions. Just in case the reader wonders how to juggle corn bread, carrot and parsley salad, and roasted potatoes with garlic mayonnaise and come up with a dinner menu, there is a selection of sample menus at the back of the book, for Fanny’s birthday, for her class pizza party, and for spring, summer, winter and fall--a junior version of the seasonal calendar that makes Fanny’s mom’s “Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook” an invaluable addition to anyone’s kitchen shelf.

The harried adult may begin to feel impatient with the charm of it all: Too much adorability, like too much creme brulee , can make your teeth wince. The thing to remember, though, is that Fanny is talking about Mom’s home cooking at what is arguably one of the best homes in the country. I have happily made Hazan’s classic roast chicken stuffed with lemons for years, and will continue to do so--but Waters’ savory competitor, rubbed with an herb, garlic and olive oil paste, was awarded joint custody of my family’s affections after the first try. The house smelled great, the chicken was succulent, moist, irresistible; a meal that usually yields next day leftovers didn’t.

Along with it (per Fanny’s suggestion) we had a salad topped with her Mom’s simple vinaigrette--just slivered shallots steeped in vinegar, which was then combined with olive oil. It disappeared. If we didn’t eat all of our corn bread, it wasn’t for lack of desire. We were too full.

The next night I tried the shredded carrot and parsley salad. Gone in a wink. On a holiday weekend when my husband succumbed to a bad cold, my daughter and I turned out ginger cookies and homemade plum ice cream (to make ice cream sandwiches) and fought for the right to lick the spoons. Then we made the pizza--and for days my 3-years-and-change daughter told anyone who would listen that we put the dough in a bowl and when we looked at it again, it was big !

She took one look at Ann Arnold’s whimsical drawing of Fanny decorating the baby in the salad bowl and demanded, “Tell me this story.” I did. I told it to her six times that night, and the next morning when she came in for breakfast she said, “Tell me that salad girl story again.”

She likes the story about the time Fanny wouldn’t try halibut (“Just try one bite! Just try one bite! Just try one bite!”). She likes the story about Mama Cat, whose good fortune it is in life to scavenge at the back door of Chez Panisse. She wants multiple readings of the story of Lindsey, the pastry chef who used to make desserts in a cottage behind the restaurant and sometimes had to carry them over in the rain.

Fanny has made food come alive for her--and the proof will be in our garden for all to see this summer, since I have promised to build her a green bean tepee, as seen on page 29. I may never get used to Fanny’s breathless prose, and I may wonder, cynical writer that I am, exactly how many of these notions came from Fanny’s brain and how many Mom wove into the text. No matter. I know about Peter Pan’s strings and harness, and my daughter, lucky one, does not, not yet. A child’s delight is the bridge to truly enjoying this cookbook. Buy it for a young friend and read it, and cook it, together.