Sometimes the way to a good book lies through a bad book—in this case, a picture book I chose for my daughter, beautifully illustrated and filled with poems that compared baby frogs to aborted childhood dreams and April showers to weeping.
Nope.
That was not the book we were looking for.
But I still wanted to give my daughter (new to reading and smitten with poetry) a beautifully illustrated book of nature poems. So I resumed the hunt and successfully brought down Sing a Song of Seasons.
There’s a poem for every day in the year in here, gathered from old favorite poets and new favorite poets, and charmingly illustrated by Frann Preston-Gannon. These are the poems I thought I’d given my daughter with the first book: delightful, filled with wonder, in no way gloomy or bitter.
From Robert Frost to Walter de la Mare, from Christina Rosetti to John Foster, this is a collection that will grow with my daughter, one that will be a lifeline from adulthood back to the childlike joy of finding a bird’s nest or spotting the first daffodil or watching spiders spin. One of my favorite parts of the day is when she appears at my elbow with this giant book and asks brightly, “Mom, can we read our poem for today?”
Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each day of the Year
Fiona Waters; Frann Preston-Gannon (2018)