By Joyce Sidman
Illustrated by Rick Allen
Houghton Mifflin, 2010
$16.99, 4-8, 32 pages
An award-winning poet invites you to "smell your way among the trees" in this beautiful, evocative book about nature's night life.
"To all of you who crawl and creep, / who buzz and chirp and hoot and peep, / who wake at dusk and throw off sleep: / Welcome to the night," Sidman writes in her opening poem.
Sidman's verses embrace the sights, sounds and smells of the night woods, while Allen's block prints envelop you in the dark beauty of things barely seen.
Richly textured and stunning to look at, Allen's engravings show only what the moonlight or approaching dawn affords.
In one spread, the moon illuminates the filaments of a spider web as if dusted with fine glitter, and in another, the bold shadows of sunrise divide trees between darkness and light.
"Where are the pale scarves of clouds?" the moon laments, as the sun rises in the book's last poem. "Where are my ghostly shadows, / my pools of molten silver, / poured with such extravagence?"
"Where are the pale scarves of clouds?" the moon laments, as the sun rises in the book's last poem. "Where are my ghostly shadows, / my pools of molten silver, / poured with such extravagence?"
