Recently I purchased the book
Seasons by Blexbolex. When I originally stumbled across this book, I was immediately taken with the bright colors and unique graphic qualities of the illustrations. I found it intriguing to wade through the reviews on Amazon about the book- it seemed it was one of those "you either love it or you hate it" books. The naysayers said that the book was disjointed and didn't really have a story. Other argued that some of the selections included in the book were too mature or abstract for young children. But the more I looked at the idea behind the book, the more I wanted to find out for myself.
The author's message to his readers about the book is simple:
"Blexbolex got lost for a while in the pages of his books.
He has needed two summers, an autumn, a winter, a spring, several storms and a lot of sunshine to rediscover the seasons for himself."
The book itself is quite thick and substantial. The cover artwork is beautiful- bright and eyecatching. The binding is covered with yellow printed fabric which gives it that "vintage library book" feel.
The book begins with a page spread for each of the seasons, jumping into Spring with a picture of a bud. It moves quickly into summer with pictures of "Tee" for t-shirt and watermelon. There is a short season of Autumn with an overcoat and mushrooms in the forest, before moving to winter with snowflakes and ice skates. Then again comes the spring, with its "Thaw" and resulting "Torrent". Children jump in puddles, women hang their laundry on the line to dry outside, and families set out on road trips. The book continues on a few more seasonal cycles from here, before finally ending again with a seedling, growing up.
Here is where I come to disagree with the opinion that the book has no "story". If you read the book more than one time, you will begin to pick up on special relationships between the pictures throughout the book. A seed turns into a shoot. A plum that appears at the beginning of the book, later reappears as a prune the following Autumn. Pruning of the trees provides reserves for firewood for the winter. The spring thaw results in a river torrent. The beautiful fragrance from the blooming flowers creates an allergy on the subsequent page. The cyclical nature of the book allows for children to begin to make connections between what happens in nature and the resulting human behavior and activities that go along with the seasons. It also allows for connecting the dots between the causes and the effects of natural occurrences (drought, and a later forest fire, for example).
There is a picnic.
The people leave behind some trash....
which a bird discovers......
and uses to build his nest.
My son and I spent a while talking about this series of four pages alone. Picnics, littering and care for the environment, how birds build a nest, and the vocabulary word "debris", which was new for him. All that from four words and four pictures.
The book has some strength to it.
Here, the first clue of Autumn.....
and the bird migration is a clue for the Winter to come.
Some of my personal favorites include...
Summer's fireflies and shooting stars...
The end of Autumn's love connections and the stubborn tree that doesn't want to give up its leaves (the same tree was a late bloomer earlier in the book)....
night....
and Spring bringing the birth of new animal babies.
My children's favorites so far include:
picking out items they recognize from the Tornado (look, there is a cow, and a house!)....
the intense and creative parade spread.....
and the little boy who feels "Glum" because it is raining outside and he can't go fly his kite. This was another great vocabulary lesson- Glum was also a new word for them, as were....
...carefree & captivated. Now they know them. My son really stared at the captivated picture for a while, like it held something special for him.
They also found amusement in the camping and mosquito connection, and noticed a few pages later when it shows the people scratching red bumps with the word "Itchy".
We've read this book several times by now, and each time we find something new to talk about.
My children are 4 and under, so some of the concepts require some discussions, but that is one of the things I enjoy about this book. The simple yet visually stunning illustrations are something even my 2 year old can enjoy on her own as well.
♥
