Picture Book - We Are Grateful Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell

A Seibert Honor Book
Illustrated by Frank Lessac

2018 Charlesbridge

HC $17.99

32 thick pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.28 - 671 ratings

My rating:  5
Endpapers:  Deep, luscious dark purple/eggplant

1^st line/s:  "Cherokee people say otsaliheligs (oh-jah-LEE-gah/we are grateful) to express gratitude.  It is a reminder to celebrate our blessings and reflect on struggles - daily, throughout the year, and across the seasons."

My comments: This book is GORGEOUS.  It details the lives of the Cherokee Nation through the seasons, giving the Cherokee words (and pronunciations right on the page, hooray!!), and the simple writing is beautiful.  You close the book with a good feeling, and you want to SHARE! I want to put some of these illustrations on my walls!

Goodreads:  A look at modern Native American life as told by a citizen of the Cherokee Nation
          The word otsaliheliga (oh-jah-LEE-hay-lee-gah) is used by members of the Cherokee Nation to express gratitude. Beginning in the fall with the new year and ending in summer, follow a full Cherokee year of celebrations and experiences. 
          Appended with a glossary and the complete Cherokee syllabary, originally created by Sequoyah.

Poetry Picture Book - When Green Becomes Tomatoes: Poems for All Seasons by Julie Fogliano

Illustrated by Julie Morstad

2016, Roaring Brook Press

HC $18.99

56 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.27 - 1341 ratings

My rating:  5
Endpapers: solid red

My comments:  47 exquisite poems, truly exquisite.  No matter how short, each one really packs a punch!  Thoughtful, creative, and incredibly insightful, they are perfect for a bit of reflection, a small smile, and a whimsical look at life through the seasons.  There's no punctuation or capitalizationg, so it's easy to make beautiful pictures in your mind!  My only drawback is that each one is titled with a date, and for me it limits their usage a bit....if I want to use the "september 10" poem in April, it might be a bit disconcerting for the listener's imagination....

Goodreads:
 december 29

and i woke to a morning
that was quiet and white
the first snow
(just like magic) came on tip toes
overnight 
          Flowers blooming in sheets of snow make way for happy frogs dancing in the rain. Summer swims move over for autumn sweaters until the snow comes back again. In Julie Fogliano's skilled hand and illustrated by Julie Morstad's charming pictures, the seasons come to life in this gorgeous and comprehensive book of poetry.

march 20

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

april 3

today

the sky was too busy sulking

to rain

and the sun was exhausted from trying

and everyone

it seemed

had decided

to wear their sadness

on the outside

and even the birds

and all their singing

sounded brokenhearted

inside of all that gray

august 3

if you want to be sure

that your are nothing more than small

stand at the edge of the ocean

looking out

september 10

a star is someone else’s sun

more flicker glow than blinding

a speck of light too far for bright

and too small to make a morning

october 15

because they know

they cannot stay

they fade and fall

then blow away

because they know

they cannot stay

they leave 

and leave

and leave

february 3

with snowy arms sagging

the spruce seemed to know

that beautiful outweighs the snow

                     

PICTURE BOOK - Apples and Robins by Lucie Felix

Illustrated by the author

2016, Chronicle Books (2013 in France)

48 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.02 - 257 ratings

My rating:  4

Endpapers: none

1^st line/s:  "All you need for apples are circles and the color red."

My comments:  This story tells of a backyard of robins and apple trees and how the two thrive together.  Shapes are cut from the pages of the book, and when overlayed onto drawn, brightly colorful shapes, create a new image.  Pretty cool and wonderful!

Goodreads:  In this extraordinary book, one thing transforms into another as each page turns—a circle becomes an apple, an oval becomes a bird, winter becomes spring. Constantly surprising and brilliantly constructed, Lucie Félix's Apples and Robins is full of the magic of shape, color, and imagination. All you need to do . . . is turn the page.

PICTURE BOOK - Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner

Illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal

2015, Chronicle Books (SF)

48 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.1 - 794 ratings

My rating:  5

Endpapers: Beige with brown line drawings of plants and garden tools

Illustrations:  No white border, actually no white: all beige, edge of page to edge of page...

1^st line/s:  "Up in the garden, I stand and plan ---
my hands full of seeds and my head full of dreams."

My comments:  Great information about gardens, soil, planting, and seasons, this reads as a fiction book but is full of information for little ones.  It also has beautiful language, lots of alliteration, and great rhythm.  I read it aloud to eight preschoolers, holding all their attention, and will use it with my STEM "Down and Dirty" (soils) summer camp at the library.  

Goodreads:  In this exuberant and lyrical follow-up to the award-winning Over and Under the Snow, discover the wonders that lie hidden between stalks, under the shade of leaves . . . and down in the dirt. Explore the hidden world and many lives of a garden through the course of a year! Up in the garden, the world is full of green—leaves and sprouts, growing vegetables, ripening fruit. But down in the dirt exists a busy world—earthworms dig, snakes hunt, skunks burrow—populated by all the animals that make a garden their home.

Mama, Is It Summer Yet? - Nikki McClure

Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2010
$17.95
32 pages
Rating: 4
Endpapers: Red with white strawberry vine paper cuts

Two page spreads
Left page: solid color with the words, "Mama, is it summer yet?"
Right page: A black & white cut paper illustration on pale yellow.
Then, two pages with the simple response. For example:

"Not yet, my little one.
But the buds are swelling.
Soon new leaves will unfold."

The illustrations are black and white cut paper on a pale yellow with accents of the solid color from the previous page. They tie together beautifully and are quite lovely. I love the look.

Every four pages become a different color - green, brown, purple, yellow, pink, and then red when summer finally arrives. The book is simple and beautiful.

Swing Around the Sun - Barbara Juster Esbensen

POETRY
Illustrated by:
Cheng-Khee Chee (spring)
Janice Lee Porter (summer)
Mary GrandPre (fall)
Stephen Gammell (winter)
Carolrhoda Books, 2003 (original verse 1965)
48 pgs.
Endpapers: orange

Enjoy beautiful art from four very different illustrators while traveling through the seasons with twenty of Esbensen's (1925-1996) poems that include:

Storm

Day is Night!
The world is black;
The thunder snaps
With a splitting crack!

Beaks of lightning
Rip the air
And willows swing
Their streaming hair.

Threads of rain
Bind earth to sky;
The gutter’s torrent
Rushes by.

No house has shape,
No tree has form;
The town is lost
In summer storm!

Discovery

Within its polished universe
The apple holds a star,
A secret constellation
To scatter near and far.

Let a knife discover
Where the five points hide;
Split the shining ruby
And find the star inside!

Fireworks

The sky’s a fiery garden
That scatters in the breeze,
Vying with the fireflies
Glowing in the trees.

Spangling the darkness,
Velvety and deep,
The last exploding starfall
Crumbles into sleep.

A Kitten Tale - Eric Rohmann

For: Very young kids
Published: 2008
Rating: 4,5/5
Read: September 13, 2008
Endpapers: Happy yellow
THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING!!

If I were not reading picture books that have gotten starred reviews, anticipating the Caldecott Award in January, I would never have picked this book up. It was a pleasant surprise, but I guess it shouldn't have been.

Simple, simple, simple -- but wonderful. Three of four kittens were dreading the arrival of snow - afraid of the unknown. But the fourth kitten could't wait. Through summer rains and falling autumn leaves they wait, three dreading, one anticipating. And then, one winter morning, they awaken to snow.....and we see a wonderful, two-page wordless illustration of three of the kittens, paws to the window glass, watching the snow come down. I'd love to frame that illustration. They go outside to join the already frolicking fourth kitten, finding their months of dread have been for no reason at all.

Thick black-lined framed illustrations, with the major items outlined in the same black, the color is added using watercolors.

Simple repetition. Simple story. Simple paintings. Simply lovely.

Old Bear - Kevin Henkes

For: Very young kids
Published: 2008
Rating: 4.5/5
Read: Sept. 13, 2008
Endpapers: Brown on brown leaves in the front and purple on lilac flowers in the back.

Thick lines frame each illustrations, which sit on pages of creamy ivory.

As an old brown bear hibernates in the winter, he dreams of his childhood in spring, summer, fall, and then winter. Each of his dreams are drawn in different color schemes. The winter dream is done mostly in blues with sparkling colors surrounding the sun in the sky. It's really pretty. And when Old Bear awakens from his sleep, he walks out of his cave into the scene from his spring dream, now real.