cheerful 
| Look what came to my house while I was out of town on school visits last week! I'd been eager to see Joyce Sidman's newest poetry book, and here it is! Red Sings from Treetops: a year in colors(illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski). Joyce, along with teacher Nicola Turner, gave a fantastic presentation about poetry at IRA earlier this week. Joyce talked a bit about how she wanted to play with synesthesia (the unusual association of one sense with another--as in a person who associates certain music or certain color with every number) in poem form a little bit. The result was Red Sings from Treetops, in which colors morph and change throughout the seasons. Here's one of my favorite parts, from the Summer section. |  |
And where is Blue?
Humming, shimmering,
snoozing in the lazy haze.
Dancing on water
with Yellow and Green.
In summer,
Blue grows new names:
turquoise,
azure,
cerulean.
Purple pours
into summer evenings one shadow at a time,
so slowly
I don't notice until
hill,
house,
book in my hand,
and Pup's
Brown spots
are all
Purple.
That image of purple pouring into shadows--yum!
Pup appears briefly here and there in the text, but on every spread, I think, in the illustrations. I'm not sure how I feel about that, because this idea of color as a thing, as a personality, feels so exotic and enchanted that I want to stay in that world. Pup startles me every time he or she is mentioned.
But that's a tiny quibble. This book is gorgeous, both in words and in art. It's not a series of standalone poems. Instead, there is a section for each season, but the whole thing flows completely smoothly. It wants to be read in one sitting, not teased apart. Regardless, here are a couple more favorite bits:
Green floats through rain-dark trees,
and glows, mossy-soft, at my feet.
And
Red splashes fall trees,
seeps into
every vein
of every five-fingered leaf.
Red swells
on branches bent low.
This is a whole new way of seeing the world, and I love it. When my younger daughter was little, she made everything into families. Where I saw salt and pepper shakers and red pepper, she saw Mom and Dad and Baby. Everything fit into families--numbers, colors, butter (yes, butter), and all manner of things. Sometimes I could see the connection, and sometimes it eluded me. It wasn't just make believe--it was actually how she perceived things. I remember reading a bit about synesthesia around that time and thinking that my daughter's family filter was just a few branches away on that tree of oddness.
Anyway, when I read this lovely picture book, I felt like I had been handed a new pair of magical glasses through which to see the world. So put on a pair and read this book:>)