Customer Reviews

Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors (Sidman, Joyce)

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I have been inspired by Joyce Sidman to get back to what I love doing best - reading brilliant children's literature and raving about it to any unfortunate who happens to bother to read it.

There are a lot of poems about color out there and I am sure that practically any elementary-aged child in the English-speaking world has had to write one. It's pretty easy and has a low-risk level (unlike my cat - long story). However, like most things that are pretty easy to do, they are really hard to do well.

I have spent many an early morning and late evening in my yard trying to think of an opening line for a poem about a cardinal. When you live in the northern regions of this fair land, the sight of a cardinal's scarlet plumage against eye-searing-white snow is sometimes the only hope you have that the world is still turning and you're not stuck in this frozen wasteland forever. Don't get me wrong, winter is beautiful when it first comes and everything is clean white,

"White dazzles day

and turns night

inside out."

But, at a certain point, you need to see green.

Luckily for me, Sidman knows this, too and she comes endowed with the magic touch with words. It's like she got inside my heart - because, truly, that's where poetry germinates - and translated it in to these beautiful poems - because, truly, that's what the poets you love do.

"And Red?

Red beats inside me:

thump-thump-thump."

Sidman is frugal but never meagre with her words. They take on the exact shape, smell, and feel of the season's passing colors. The verses are short but complete and leave pleanty of room for the stunning art work of Zagarenski. Verse and picture blend seamlessly together. Zagarenski never tries to "outcolor" the poems,and her palate is rich and delicious just when it needs to be. Zagarenski also illustrated Sidman's This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgivenessand the same crowned and whimsically dressed figures run through these pages. The cardinal is ever present with his own crimson crown. Each page tells a story and I discover something new every time I read the book.

Luckily for us, Sidman and Zagarenski know how to make a simple thing look and sound stunningly difficult.

Our family loves books. We've been unable to return this one to the library without buying a copy for ourselves. When my 2.5 yr old daughter recites,

"...and

each note drops

like a cherry

into

my

ear,"

her tremendous joy is reason enough to recommend this book to anyone who loves words, loves colors and appreciates the seasons.

The lush illustrations are worthy of a book that speaks in color--a delight!

Colors dance through the seasons, from spring to winter and back again, following the red cardinal's "cheer," and presence throughout the year. Told in seasonal poems, the greens of spring, the blues of summer, the oranges and blacks of fall and the whites of winter, burst forth onto the pages, with painted and mixed media illustrations. The lyrical lines of color let the reader look at the beauty of four seasons. Children ages 5-8 will sing song with these poems of the year.

As a child I had many favorite books and it was only when I got older that they crystallized in my brain enough so that I could chose a "favorite". But if you asked me today what book I loved more than any other, I don't think I'd be too off-base when I said it was Tasha Tudor's A Time to Keep. Now there are a couple of reasons for this. I liked how she drew cupcakes, I liked the corgis, and I particularly liked the idea of kids running around playing games and pranks each month. But the thing that stuck with me, and continues to stick with me after all these years, was the feeling I got when I read that book. It was my first encounter with the evocative and I've never quite forgotten it. It's something I like to keep a lookout for when I read picture books today. Generally, I don't quite find it, but once in a great while there's a book that hits all the right chords. This year, that book would have to be Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors. A follow-up of sorts to Joyce Sidman and Pamela Zagarenski's This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness, Sidman and Zagarenski do what they can to conjure up what seasonal change feels like. It's nothing like their previous book, and everything you'd want in a poetry collection.

If you're going to write poems about the seasons, it's good to find a way to do so. Why not use colors then? Poet Joyce Sidman takes on the challenge, describing each season with a series of six or so poems, sometimes using the colors you'd expect (green for spring, of course) and sometimes using colors you wouldn't normally consider (gray for summer). The poems elicit thrills as they discuss the small moments that make a season feel real to a person. Watching moths flutter outside a screen door. The suddenness of a spring storm. The different shades of blue you spot on the waves of a lake or ocean. And in almost every picture a red bird flies high above, the Red who sings the seasons, one after another after another.

I don't actually know the story behind this book. A co-worker informed me that rather that lots of little separate poems this is actually a book that's just one big poem broken up into small sections. Maybe it's true, but that's not how it felt to me. While there was certainly a connection between one section and another (she doesn't just throw autumn into the middle of spring or summer amidst the cold blowing winds of December) they are separate little entities in and of themselves. Each little poem (if you see them as such) is a different color, and not always the color you might associate with a season. Pink for winter? Makes a lot more sense with Sidman tells you that "Pink blooms powder-soft over pastel hills." At the same time, colors repeat themselves. Pink also happens to be a spring color. "And here, in secret places, peeps Pink: hairless, featherless, the color of new things." The color is now the crisp cold morning light on the one hand, and the soft unprotected underbelly of a helpless creature on the other.

Generally I don't have much respect for summer. Don't get me wrong, I love it when I'm in it. But reading about it? Blah blah sand blah blah sun. So how much more impressive it is to me when Sidman brings summer to life (just as she does every season) in a way that doesn't rely on old tropes and overused phrases? When talking about a warm twilight she writes simply, "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." So she does a good summer, but the real test? How does she treat my favorite season of the year, fall? Well for starters she brings up the green that you see in the fall. "Green is tired, dusty, crisp around the edges." That is true. Brown rules the fall, red falls from the trees, and yellow becomes the school bus. Purple is the smell of, "old leaves, crushed berries, squishy plums with worms in them. Purple: the smell of all things mixed together." And finally, the great and powerful orange of Halloween alongside the black "resting in dark branches". Brilliant.

And of course, there are the pictures. Another co-worker of mine (they're an outspoken crew) found the fact that a lot of animals and people wear crowns in this book just a bit too twee. This is true. There is a crown on the main character, whosoever that person is, and on the animals as well. I agree that crowns can be considered twee (particularly when they hover over the baby birds' heads) but fortunately (A) I wasn't distracted by them until I was told to notice them and (B) I find them more fun than anything else. Crooked crowns like those worn by Jughead or Bugs Meaney are particularly cool. Besides, it takes a hard and hardened heart not to enjoy the illustrations in this book, which are not twee in the least. Now I'll confess to you that Zagarenski is working with mixed media paintings on wood (with computer illustrations for spice) and I am not always a mixed media fan. I tend to like my media unmixed, but this artist does a stand up job of conjuring up the very temperature of a season. Those black summers feel muggy and that fall so crisp. You come to trust Zagarenski's choices. So much so that even a whale in a night sky makes perfect sense in the context of its surroundings. You do not question these selections. She gives you no reason to.

The design is particularly pleasing too. The designers of the world simply do not get enough credit sometimes. Maybe this is all Zagarenski, but the poems really work beautifully within and with the illustrations. We've all seen those children's books where the picture book text has been dismissed to a plain white border, produced solely for the purpose of making the words legible. Here the words are readable and they always make sense that they crop up where they do. You wouldn't put them anywhere else.

From a purposeful standpoint I will sometimes get teachers or parents in my library looking for poetry collections that support the curriculum in one way or another. I had one woman come in looking for poems about shapes (it can be found, but it's not easy). Colors and seasons are similar requests, and I'm sure that there are children's librarians all over the country fielding such reference questions. Sometimes you have to rely on some dilapidated old title that just happens to be what you need. And sometimes, just sometimes, you can hand them something like Red Sings from Treetops secure in the knowledge that you've just introduced your patrons to something fabulous. The first time I hand this to a patron I know I'll be positively giddy and probably repeating "Have you seen it? Have you seen it? Have you seen it?" like a broken record. Beautiful in every possible sense of word, this is a book that engages both the heart and the eyes. Necessary purchase.

I purchase this book as Birthday gifts for the young ones in my life. So far, they have all loved it. The illustrations are so beautiful and unique. I am from Mystic, CT so I like to send my friends something from my hometown. This has been the perfect gift!

i loved the colors that make the year. i think the author made it beautiful and i loved the story. i liked that the illustrator and author made the colors of every season. i liked how the author made such beautiful words. i loved that you made a year of colors.

What a great book, illustrations are beautiful and a really lovely thought out book for children and adults alike.

My 2 year old and I are just in love with this gorgeous book. We make new discoveries in the illustrations each time we read it and she sits still through the whole thing, which is saying a lot! I know it will be one of our favorites for a long time as she grows into it and her perceptions of seasons change over time. I could happily read it to her every night for many years!

This is the sweetest book! I bought it for my son who is one year old, he's still a bit young to fully understand but he loves the pictures. The art is folksy and funky in a "found art" meets "scrapbooking" sort of way. The pictures make you want to create your own collages of words and shapes and colors. The poetry is simply delicious! Each page is full of inspiring and colorful poems about the seasons. This book is bound to show children the power and playfulness of words, and reveal the splendor and subtleties of the natural world using all the senses. The language is earthy, simple and onomatopaeiaic. Here is an example: "Fall smells PURPLE: old leaves, crushed berries, squishy plums with worms in them. PURPLE: the smell of all things mixed together." My favorite poem is this one about Springtime and the color Pink: "And here, in secret places, peeps PINK: hairless, featherless, the color of new things."

I just opened my amazon package 10 minutes ago. Immedidately I was drawn to the one picture book I got on a lark: Red Sings from Treetops. What gorgeous illustrations! WOW! There's almost a magical feel to them, due to a wonderful combination of seemingly simplified, childlike drawings that are actually incredibly complex in their details and in their treatment of background, textures, and color. Realistic representations mix with fanciful ones; backgrounds and large expanses of color, like grass, are treated with whimsical patterns, and shapes are often formed out of collage. It is one of the most beautiful children's books I've ever seen, and I'm a collector.

The story is pleasant and fulfilling, as the author guides the reader through the year via color raher than the usual month approach. The writing itself is innovative as well, utilizing as other reviewers have mentioned poetry that will please little ones with the occasional rhymes, but is never labored. This is the rare children's book that is a treat for adults as well as children, between the instructive and unique approach to the story and the illustrations that are whimsical enough to excite children but that have beauty and complexity to please adults.

I looked through the whole book, but it's just too big of a treat to rush through. I'm looking forward to savoring every page with great pleasure.