Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* This slim book provides a nuanced look at a familiar theme: poetry for the seasons. Taking a diary-like approach, the text begins and ends with the spring equinox, offering poems for different days throughout the year. A bluebird's song starts things off, poking / a tiny hole / through the edge of winter / and landing carefully / balancing gently / on the tip of spring. Verse by verse, day by day, the snow melts, April showers fall, magnolias bloom, berries ripen, warm rivers beckon swimmers, fireflies twinkle, a new school year starts, leaves turn, and winter returns. The poems stand on their own as solidly as they connect to each other, inviting multiple readings to experience the details. Fogliano's (If You Want to See a Whale, 2013) descriptions are laden with imagery, evoking the sensations felt by a change in temperature or the flavor of a blueberry. Complementing the poems are Morstad's gouache and pencil-crayon illustrations, which range from effectively simple (a firefly glowing in the dark) to tantalizingly detailed (spot the inchworm or the ladybug in the shrubs). A multiracial cast of children relishing the delights of the seasons adds to this title's appeal. Pair with Paul B. Janeczko's Firefly July: A Year of Very Short Poems (2014) for another poetic look at the seasons.--Chaudhri, Amina Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In a contemplative tour of the year, Fogliano and Morstad sensitively yet strongly evoke seasonal experiences like standing at the ocean's edge, anticipating sweater weather, and uncovering acres of mud beneath melting snow. The poems-roughly a dozen per season, and all given dates-range from just a few lines ("just like a tiny, blue hello/ a crocus blooming/ in the snow" for March 22) to longer reflections: the July 10 poem that lends the book its title ("when green becomes tomatoes/ there will be sky/ and sun/ and possibly a cloud or two," it begins) reads like it could have been a standalone companion to Fogliano's If You Want to See a Whale. Working in gouache and pencil, Morstad (Swan) creates an appealing, multiracial cast of children in scarves and swimsuits, pajamas and parkas, while helping highlight the way that small things-a sprouting plant, a falling leaf-can herald big changes. Ages 6-10. Illustrator's agent: Emily Van Beek, Folio Literary Management. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 3-This evocative celebration of the four seasons through verse is an essential addition to poetry collections. Fogliano's text marries natural observations with human emotion to create a collection that is quiet but full of powerful feeling. Readers could easily incorporate the journal-like style to chronicle their burgeoning relationship with nature and time. Morstad's watercolor illustrations invoke the changing seasons with gentleness and beauty and invite closer inspection-a perfect complement to the well-crafted poems. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
This collection of nearly fifty seasonal poems begins and ends on march 20 with a blue bird on a flowering tree branch. The poem is the same each time, too: from a snow-covered tree / one bird singing / each tweet poking / a tiny hole / through the edge of winter / and landing carefully / balancing gently / on the tip of spring. A little girl appears wearing the same boots, hat, and warm cozy sweater (different gloves; those always get lost!) to observe the coming spring. The girl, with straight black hair, dark eyes, and brown skin, is in most of the pictures, sometimes with other children, almost always interacting with nature. In summer she goes to the beach and appreciates the joys of a sandy picnic (nothing in the world / could possibly be more delicious / than those plums / and those peanut butter sandwiches / a little bit salty / and warm from the sun); makes a leaf pile in October (because they know / they cannot stay / they fade and fall / then blow away); and imagines herself as a snowflake. Morstads gouache and pencil crayon pictures and Foglianos poetry are delicately precise, gracefully and economically expressed, and filled with the wonder of genuine childhood experience untainted by sentimentality. susan dove lempke (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Forty-eight short poems follow the four seasons, beginning and concluding on March 20, a bird singing, "each tweet poking / a tiny hole / through the edge of winter," as spring comes round again.Fogliano's intimate, graceful verse and Morstad's precise, bright illustrations evoke the ways that weather, water, sky, and growing things change throughout the year. Fogliano catalogs both dramatic and quotidian pleasures and acknowledges the boredom that comes with too much mud, rain, or winter. Each poem is dated, as in a journal; every word, including the pronoun "I," is lowercase; commas, parentheses, and occasional sets of quotation marks are the only punctuation. These quietly conversational poems include moments of lively energywind on a hilltop or the jubilant dizziness of a summer meadow. Morstad's exquisite gouache-and-pencil-crayon art is well-matched to the delicacy of the poetry. A lovely young girl with straight black hair and brown skin appears alone or with friends throughout; readers may identify her as the voice in many of the poems. Bright flowers lean on slender stalks; in a double-page spread that evokes Time of Wonder, stars wink in the vastness of a late-summer sky. The tiniest points of color draw the eye so that even mud and snow are hardly dreary. This combination of poetry and art in praise of the familiar, natural world is sweetly, successfully dazzling. (Picture book/poetry. 4-10) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
