Pictures of Success : David Diaz chose to tell tales of the 1992 riots in vibrant acrylics. And now he’s won the Caldecott prize for the country’s best illustrated children’s book.

Looters ransacking a dry-cleaning store. Racial tensions. An apartment building on fire.

Not the kinds of things you’d expect to find in a children’s book. But “Smoky Night” (Harcourt Brace, 1994) is no ordinary children’s book.

Last week, “Smoky Night,” which tells the story of an urban riot from a child’s perspective, won the prestigious Randolph Caldecott Medal, awarded annually by the American Library Assn. to the best illustrated children’s book.

For the book’s illustrator, David Diaz, the award is sweet vindication for a controversial project that began almost immediately after the L.A. riots.

“I was stunned,” Diaz said in an interview from his home in Rancho La Costa, about an hour north of San Diego. His voice reduced to a hoarse rasp by a week of fielding interviews and job offers, Diaz nonetheless couldn’t contain his elation.

“I can’t imagine a cooler award to get. It’s like winning the Pulitzer Prize,” he said.

“Smoky Night” was the idea of Pasadena author Eve Bunting, who said she started writing the story while the National Guard was still on the streets of Los Angeles after three nights of deadly rioting from April 29 to May 1, 1992.

“I immediately thought of the children who were there and who were watching it on TV,” Bunting said. “What did they think about what they were seeing?”

So she wrote the story of a boy named Daniel, who loses his cat, Jasmine, during a night of rioting that sweeps through his neighborhood. Daniel, his mother and their neighbors take refuge in a shelter after a fire drives them from their apartment building.

So does Mrs. Kim, the neighborhood grocer from whom Daniel’s mother has always kept her distance, telling her son, “It’s better if we buy from our own people.” Mrs. Kim’s grocery store has been looted and her cat is missing too. Everyone knows the two cats don’t get along. Where could they be?

Diaz’s stunning page design sets 14 vibrant acrylic tableaux against backgrounds of photographed collages. The classically composed tableaux, with their bright colors and thick lines, have the quality of stained glass. Even the smoke seems solid.

But it’s the collages that are most compelling. Made of bits of everything from cardboard and cloth to shoe leather and cereal, they create a sense of chaos and, in the end, reconciliation.

The book hasn’t been universally praised. USA Today called the work morose and said the harrowing tale ought to come with a parental guidance label.

But Candace Lynch, a San Gabriel children’s book critic and former librarian, said she recommends the book to teachers and parents.

“It’s a perfect book,” she said. “Children learn that even in the worst of situations, some good can come. When you read it to children, you see their eyes getting wider. The little ones put their thumbs in their mouths. Then, when the cats are found together, everyone lets out this collective sigh of relief.

“I was stunned by the artwork,” Lynch added. “There is one page where Mrs. Kim is standing outside her grocery store after it has been looted, and you realize that the collage in the background (mostly multicolored breakfast cereal) must have been what the floor of her store looked like. Even adults should be moved by images like this.”

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Diaz, a graduate of the Ft. Lauderdale Art Institute, spent the early years of his career as a graphic designer before gradually moving into illustrating full-time. “Smoky Night” is the first picture book he has illustrated, although his artwork has appeared in many major magazines and newspapers, including The Times.

Diaz, who has three children, said his 5-year-old son, Ariel, took the book to kindergarten, where his teacher read it to the class.

“He loved it,” Diaz said with the double pride of a father and artist. “He’s only 5 and he understood what it was saying about tolerance and people needing to get along.”

Even though race and prejudice make up the subtext of the book, the characters themselves are not representatives of any particular ethnic groups.

“That was absolutely intentional,” Diaz said. “There’s a sameness to the characters. Even though they are all identifiable, the palette is the same for everyone.”

Bunting, who has written more than 150 books in her 25-year career, said she couldn’t have been more pleased with Diaz’s approach.

“I had an uncertain feeling on how an illustrator was going to handle it,” she said. “I didn’t want to have any specifically black people or brown people. I thought it was brilliant. There is a dignity to all of them.” She laughed. “I never thought I’d like people with blue faces, but there it is.”

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Amazing as it may seem, Bunting and Diaz have never met. They had never even spoken to each other until Bunting called Diaz last week to congratulate him on winning the Caldecott medal.

Their collaboration came about when Diaz sent a booklet of illustrations to Harcourt Brace Editor Diane D’Andrade as a present. The loose sketches depicted faces Diaz saw while vacationing in Brazil. D’Andrade thought so much of the illustrations, and the collages they were set against, that she immediately commissioned Diaz to do “Smoky Night.”

“I had worked with David on another project (a book of poetry called ‘Neighborhood Odes’), and I didn’t even consider him for ‘Smoky Night,’ ” D’Andrade said. “His style just didn’t seem suited for it. But when I saw that book (of sketches), I knew I had my illustrator.”

“I had never done anything quite like it before,” Diaz said of the project. “There was an element of fear.”

The Caldecott medal, awarded annually since 1938, is considered the most prestigious award a children’s illustrator can win.

The American Library Assn. also awarded the 1995 John Newbery Medal to author Sharon Creech, an American citizen who lives in Surrey, England, for her book “Walk Two Moons,” published by HarperCollins. It tells the story of a 13-year-old Native American girl who sets out to visit her mother who has not returned from a trip to Idaho.

Winners were chosen by a committee of librarians, teachers and critics. The medals will be presented in June.

In the meantime, Diaz has begun working on his second picture book.

“I didn’t know it could be this good,” he said. “I know some people think I’m a newcomer, but believe me, I’ve paid my dues.”

“I hope he doesn’t think this is easy,” Bunting said, laughing. “It’s going to be hard to top his debut.”