Fasten your seat belts, everyone!  It’s Perfect Picture Book Friday!  And if last week is anything to judge by we’re in for quite a ride!

I’m REALLY excited to share today’s book with you.  It is so incredibly beautiful.  Beautiful art, and even more beautiful language.  There, now see?  I’m getting ahead of myself telling you why I like it before I’ve even told you what it is!  But get ready, because this one is really special!

Red Sings From Treetops: A Year In Colors
Written By: Joyce Sidman
Illustrated By: Pamela Zagarenski
Houghton Mifflin Books For Children, April 2009, Fiction
Suitable For: ages 5 and up
Themes: Colors, Seasons, Poetry
Opening:
“In SPRING,
Red sings from treetops:
cheer-cheer-cheer,
each note dropping
like a cherry
into my ear.


Red turns
the maples feathery,
sprouts in rhubarb spears;
Red squirms on the road after rain.”


(Don’t you just love that?  Can’t you just hear that cardinal singing and see the worms wiggling on the pavement?)


Brief Synopsis:  From the jacket: “Color comes alive in this whimsical, innovative book.”  That pretty much sums it up!


Links To Resources: Junior Library Guild Activity Guide, Poem Starters, Readers Guide


Why I Like This Book:  I love the lyrical language of this book.  The author was so creative in her thinking – the way she describes the colors makes you see, feel, hear, touch, and taste Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.  The art is exquisite and perfectly suited to the poetry.  How can you not love lines like,
“Green waits
in the hearts of trees,
feeling
the earth
turn.”

I hope you’ll get a chance to read this book, linger over the language, enjoy the images it evokes, maybe challenge yourself or your children to come up with your own descriptions!

For the complete list of books with resources, please visit Perfect Picture Books.

As a special and related note, for parents who might be interested, I wanted to share something from Vivian over at Positive Parental Participation.  Vivian is encouraging parents to read with their children via her 2012 Challenge.  She describes it as follows:

It might be a fun way to interact with other parents, share your reading choices and experiences, and win some books 🙂

I also want to say a special thanks to Penny who totally baled me out of my posting time quagmire.  Several of you (subscribers) commented that you weren’t getting posts until very late at night or even the next day.  I can relate to this, as I have the same problem with several of your blogs, but I had no idea how to fix it.  Penny, bless her heart, worked google magic and found a link with step-by-step instructions that even I could follow 🙂  A little experimentation may be necessary but I’m hoping the problem is fixed.  Thank you, Penny 🙂

PPB Bloggers, please remember to add your link below – if you don’t I can’t promise I’ll find you!  And it helps me tremendously to have the ages and themes listed on the post – it makes the archiving much easier!  Thank you all so much!  Our list is coming along beautifully.  We’re up to 140 books covering 95 categories, posted by 29 devoted bloggers – you guys are awesome!  Can’t wait to see what gets added today!

And don’t forget to tune in specially on Sunday for our interview with Michael Garland, and Monday for our first installment of Oh Susanna!