Monday, April 12, 2010

Nonfiction Monday -- Nature's Paintbox


Nature's Paintbox, a Seasonal Gallery of Art and Verse by Patricia Thomas. Illustrated by Craig Orback. Minneapolis, MN: Millbrook Press, 2007.

This is one of those WoW books, whose illustrations take the statements in the poem and fly with it.

Nature's Paintbox. I love, love, love books that move around the calendar year. This book of poetry compares seasons to various styles of art. (Remember -- poetry is in the nonfiction collection in the library.)

"Winter is done in pen and ink... black and white."
And it is -- lovely pen and ink drawings with only faint bits of colors inserted by photoshop. (Hey, I'm not that smart. I didn't figure that out myself. It's all explained at the back of the book.)

"And then...
Nature draws
SPRING
in pastel chalk,..."
warm as sunshine colors... blurry, furry, ...fresh green-fuzzy, baby leaf, baby fern colors....
Even the words of this poem change from the crisp, clean winter words to warm, soft, bilowy springtime words.

And then... Nature paints SUMMER
in watercolors ....

But for my favorite season,
"Nature works
AUTUMN in oils..."

Lovely lucious words
lovely lucious artwork.
enjoy.

More Nonfiction Monday posts are located today at the blog, Shelf-Employed.
-wendieO

2 comments:

shelf-employed said...

I haven't seen this one yet. It looks lovely, but I don't think my system owns a copy. I'd better ILL a copy before budget cuts kick in!

Clara Gillow Clark said...

I love this book! Pat Thomas is a good friend of mine. I featured her on my blog in December with her brilliant book, The Red Sled.