Beautiful Day!: Petite Poems for All Seasons

by Rodoula Pappa, Seng Soun Ratanavanh (Illustrator)

Overview

Beautiful Day is a picture book of haiku-inspired poems celebrating the four seasons from author Rodoula Pappa and illustrator Seng Soun Ratanavanh.

Beautiful day!
Teach me, too, how to fly,
mother swallow!

In simple, poetic verse, a child observes their world from spring to summer, and autumn through winter, in this gentle ode to the seasons, accompanied by exquisite illustrations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951836146
Publisher:	Abrams Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	03/02/2021
Pages:	56
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.65(d)
Age Range:	5 - 7 Years

About the Author

Rodoula Pappa is a writer and translator of children’s books. Her first book, The Boy with the Tree, was awarded the Greek National Prize for Children’s Literature. She is cofounder of the Volatilium and Tsalapeteinos children’s book imprints.

Editorial Reviews

2021-03-02
A four-season round, observed in stylized scenes and 20 haiku-like poems.

Pappa is loose with her syllable count but otherwise follows the form’s conventional antecedents as she reflects on a young child’s outdoor encounters and activities: “Beautiful day! / Teach me, too, how to fly, / mother swallow.” Appealing though the spare and precise poetry may be, younger audiences will likely be more strongly drawn by the serene, harmonious pictures. As in her eye-catching illustrations for Roxane Marie Galliez’s Thank You, Miyuki (2020), Ratanavanh sets an Asian-presenting protagonist with pink cheeks against likewise stylized, mostly natural, flat backdrops constructed using delicately transparent hues and bright Japanese washi patterns. A paper boat and a flight of origami “wild geese” add further atmospheric notes. Though the child climbs a ladder in one scene to color in a rainbow and in another hangs little dolls in a Christmas tree, in general they are small enough to peer from a poppy at an equally tiny spring lamb, sit on a dahlia with a pair of “happy snails” in autumn, and, in one droll summer scene, make a lazy comment about the grasshopper on the nose of a mountainous, napping dog—oblivious to the comparatively giant butterfly perched on their own.

A little thin but the lovely art rewards lingerers. (Picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews