Tell Me a Season

by Mary McKenna Siddals, Petra Mathers (Illustrator)

Overview

“This small and simple concept book describes the colors in a spring morning, a summer day, a fall evening, and a winter night. Four specific scenes lead up to each panoramic double-page spread that features a farmhouse with a girl and a boy, a cat and a dog. Siddals’s appropriately straightforward and economical text is brought to life by Mather’s folksy watercolors. . . . It is well done without being overdone, and the size is just right.” —School Library Journal

“Cheerful yet elegant, spare yet satisfying, compact yet enveloping: these are hardly the words usually associated with simple concept books for the youngest children. But words and paintings combine to create a season book that surprises to the end. . . . Both author and artist capture the seasons with poetic intensity and wonder, finishing after ‘Winter night’ with the simplest yet pleasing conclusion: ‘Good night.’”—ALA Booklist

“A book of simple but deeply gratifying pleasures.” —Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780618130580
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/24/2001
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.14(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 3 Years

About the Author

PETRA MATHERS is an acclaimed picture book illustrator whose books include In Aunt Giraffe's Green Garden by Jack Prelutsky, The Miraculous Tale of the Two Maries by Rosemary Wells, Strange Mr. Satie by M. T. Anderson, and her own beloved Lottie books. She lives in Astoria, Oregon.

Editorial Reviews

"Colors define the four seasons in this compact look at nature's annual cycle. In Siddals's first book, children can acquaint themselves with spring, summer, fall and winter through short verse and simple paintings." Kirkus Reviews —

From the Publisher

This unassuming book observes the cycles of a year and a day, moving both through the seasons and through the course of a day-from "Spring morning" to "Winter night." First-time author Siddals's plain, restrained text throws no curves, mainly serving to gently structure the series of paintings. Mathers's (Sophie and Lou) watercolors shift in palette as well as imagery. Her compositions encompass the dusky purplish browns ("brown mud/ brown trees") of early spring warming to the clear, bright "green/ green/ green" of summer vegetation; rich, mellow fall tones give way to winter's "snow white" and "shadows black." She shows the glowing yellow sun of midsummer, the ripe red sunset of autumn, the remote moon of the winter sky. A red house painted in a naf style provides readers with a steady, year-round point of reference; joyful children and a goofy dog play under the yard's changing trees, season permitting. Mathers's illustrations convey a disarming innocence, making this a book of simple but deeply gratifying pleasures. Ages 3-6. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

PreSThis small and simple concept book describes the colors in a spring morning, a summer day, a fall evening, and a winter night. Four specific scenes lead up to each panoramic double-page spread that features a farmhouse with a girl and a boy, a cat and a dog. Siddals's appropriately straightforward and economical text is brought to life by Mathers's folksy watercolors. On facing single pages, she balances the colors and images well, sometimes even continuing the same background from one frame to the next. In her double-page spreads, she includes details that readers can trace from one season to the next (a toy sailboat in the window comes outside for summer play, but returns to its window in the fall; a clothesline is put up in summer and taken down for winter), introducing earliest readers to story line in a book. The careful finishing touches of a smiling sun on the title page, and a smiling, sleeping moon above the final page's "Good night" reflect the thoughtful execution of this fine book. It is well done without being overdone, and the size (a square seven inches) is just right.Nina Lindsay, Vista School, Albany, CA

School Library Journal

Colors define the four seasons in this compact look at nature's annual cycle. In Siddals's first book, children can aquaint themselves with spring, summer, fall, and winter through short (1218 words) verse and simple paintings. The operative word is minimalist—the text is spare and Mathers's paintings uncluttered: A yellow ball of sun or a streak of blue sky occupies an entire page. Each season is introduced with a color—"snow white/shadows black/black sky/white lights/black and white: Winter night"—and ends with one house, depicted four times in folksy scenes set against the appropriate seasonal landscape. The characteristic flat perspective, clean lines, and pleasing colors that mark Mathers's work add up to soothing effect, and the pages will be smudged by the enthusiastic pointing of little fingers.

Kirkus Reviews