Beginning with daybreak and ending with a beautiful interpretation of night, a collection of illustrated poems done in a creative acrostic format shows the world of nature in a different light. - (Baker & Taylor)

Short verses celebrate sunshine, hillsides, trees, leaves, butterflies, hummingbirds, clouds, fog, and rain. - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews

Ages 5-7. Borrowing their tactic from crossword puzzles, Paolilli and Brewer have selected 15 evocative words on which to build nature poems. The first letter of the first word in each line of a poem is part of another word that is the title (or subject) of the poem. "Silver seeds / Tossed in the air / And planted in the sky, / Reaching out of the darkness / Sprouting wonder" spells out "Stars." Most of the 14 remaining poems are just as light. A few of the longer ones--"Hummingbird" and "Butterfly" --occasionally bog down in unnatural effort, but the warm and tender illustrations by the husband-and-wife team even out the flow. --Kelly Milner Halls Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

Horn Book Guide Reviews

Brief, free verse poems about the natural world offer accessible yet vivid images. ""Trees"" are ""Tiny hands / Reaching up from the / Earth, tickling an / Enormous / Sky."" In other poems, hills resemble huge sleeping elephants, clouds become creamy scoops of ice cream, and stars sprout like silver seeds in the night sky. A boy and a girl appear throughout sparely composed, color-drenched paintings that capture a sense of wonder. Copyright 2001 Horn Book Guide Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

It's hard not to like a book so deeply thought out in concept. This collection of acrostic poetry, in which the first letter of each line of a poem forms the word that is its subject, also moves from dawn till bedtime. Two button-nosed, doll-like children play in this landscape. Each double-paged spread contains a poem superimposed on the illustration, and the one-word title is scattered on the image like pebbles. For example, "Loose brown parachute / Escaping / And / Floating on puffs of air" is on a page where floating leaves fill the space. The word "leaf" floats there, too, and a small girl stands among the leaves as the viewer looks down as if from a treetop. The flowers, hills, fog, and stars are shown in saturated but fuzzy swathes of soft-edged color, perhaps computer-produced, and the topics range from sun to shadow, hummingbird to clouds. Pleasant enough. (Picture book/poetry. 4-8) Copyright 2000 Kirkus Reviews

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Johnson and Fancher's (My Many Colored Days) progression of paintings captures an uncanny likeness to the shifting light during the course of a single day, inspired by a first-time-author team's evocative poems. The authors explore the great outdoors in a series of economical verses for which a word's letters begin each line of text. In one of the strongest poems, "Rain" becomes "Rap-tap-tapping/ At my window/ In drip-drop/ Notes." Because of the brevity of the poems, the success lies in the metaphor, and the authors come up with some perfect matches: "Stars" are "Silver seeds/ Tossed in the air/ And planted in the sky,/ Reaching out of the darkness/ Sprouting wonder," and the moon a "Marvelous melon, whole/ Or sliced,/ Offering sweet flavor to the/ Night." The chronology of the poems flows as smoothly as the passing of time: "Dawn" gives way to "Sun" then "Shadow"; "Clouds" is followed by "Fog" then "Rain." Johnson and Fancher's illustrations hew to a Shaker-like spareness. They often focus on one central image a bright hummingbird hovering at a deep purple morning glory, a single turquoise butterfly fluttering through a field of sunlit poppies and they link the poems by featuring a boy and girl, sometimes together, sometimes alone. In one particularly dramatic spread, "Fog," the children hold hands, enveloped by a swirl of gray. A dazzling example of how poetry can prompt readers to view ordinary experiences through fresh eyes. Ages 5-9. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal Reviews

K-Gr 4-The wonder that the natural world holds for children is brought to glowing life in this picture book composed of evocative poems and luminous double-page spreads. Arranged according to the cycle of a day, the verses follow a young boy and girl from dawn to darkness as they encounter a hummingbird, their shadows, clouds, rain, fog, and a handful of other amazing sights. The short poems use simple language and are filled with imagery. Using the acrostic model, they build on the letters that make up the word being described. For example, "Trees" becomes "Tiny hands/Reaching up from the/Earth, tickling an/Enormous/Sky." The title of the book is taken from "Stars," which imagines these orbs as "Silver seeds/Tossed in the air/And planted in the sky,/Reaching out of the darkness/ Sprouting wonder." Using eye-catching colors and shifting perspectives, the artwork also celebrates nature as seen through the eyes of youngsters. Whether focusing on a close-up of the boy's face as he listens to a bee or pulling back to show the two children looking tiny against a landscape of rolling hills, the illustrations, as well as the placement of the text on the page, reinforce each poem's subject. A first-rate choice for school and public libraries, this book will also be popular with classroom teachers doing poetry units.- Maura Bresnahan, Shawsheen School, Andover, MA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.