'Have you ever seen a flower?’ a voice asks, then presses further: ‘I mean really...// seen a flower?’. . . The persistent questioning is matched by the visual intensity of the spreads, colored-pencil drawings bursting with energy, angular shapes in rainbow hues that are bounded by crisp-edged negative space. . . . With assurance and passion in his solo debut, Harris (A Polar Bear in the Snow) connects readers to the stirrings of life in all its forms.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Harris’ colored-pencil illustrations are full of energy and spontaneity. His use of patterning and graphic symbology evoke Oaxacan design, yet the style is all his own. The text is equally enthusiastic. . . readers will feel themselves stretch and bloom. A visual feast teeming with life.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Have You Ever Seen a Flower?. . . a forthcoming picture book by Shawn Harris [features] illustrations so dazzling that their vibrancy hasn’t been seen since, well, the last picture book Mr. Harris illustrated, Colin Meloy’s double-espresso Everyone’s Awake. . . . From this book’s front cover we know we’re in for a blast of hue. . . ‘Have you ever seen a flower?’ we read. . . “I mean really . . . seen a flower?” At this point both the reader and the child in the book are suffused in a giddy landscape of electric pinks, greens, purples and orange—eye-watering colors that, incredibly, seem to become more intense as the book goes on. Anyone who has ever stopped to marvel at a single flower will grasp what Mr. Harris is trying to do here: He wants children to look closely, and he wants to evoke the exquisite beauty of plants in bloom. . . [D]eliciously psychedelic. . .”—The Wall Street Journal
“The text takes readers on an imaginative journey inside flowers, activating all the senses and gradually thinning the distance between the human body and nature, until the two become one. . . . [A]stounding, dense colored-pencil illustrations [extend] to the metaphoric text, which reaches for an odd sort of physical intimacy with the reader. Creative, dazzling, and fearless, Harris’ authorial debut marks an auspicious start to his picture-book career.”—Booklist
“Some books provide a chance to escape, while others offer space for contemplation and reflection. It’s the rare book that does both. Shawn Harris’ Have You Ever Seen a Flower? transforms a trip into the mountains into a spirited voyage into our very consciousness. . . . Have You Ever Seen a Flower? is an invitation to pause and imagine the worlds around us and inside us. It’s joy, color and hopefulness will ignite the imagination of anyone lucky enough to experience its magic.”—BookPage, starred review
[A] stunning tour de force. . .”—The New York Times
“The pictures have a rich visual texture, vibrant color, and a naive style, which together imply a child as ostensible artist. This effect is well aligned with the playfully inquisitive text, with rhythm and repetition akin to books by Margaret Wise Brown and Ruth Krauss. . . . Have you ever seen a book quite like this? Not likely.”—The Horn Book Magazine
2021-03-17
A young urbanite romps through floral fields and deep into a flower’s anatomy, exploring humanity’s connection to nature.
A solo car travels away from the dense, gray cityscape. Mountains rise up, full of pattern and light, before revealing a fluorescent field of flowers. A child bursts from the car across the page, neon-rainbow hair streaming in the wind, as both child and place radiate joy and life. The brown-skinned, blue-eyed youngster breathes in the meadow and begins an adventure—part Jamberry, part “Thumbelina,” and part existential journey as the child realizes the life force running through the veins of the flower is the same that runs through all of us, from the water that sustains to the sun that grows. Harris’ colored-pencil illustrations are full of energy and spontaneity. His use of patterning and graphic symbology evoke Oaxacan design, yet the style is all his own. The text is equally enthusiastic: “Have you ever seen / a flower so deep / you had to shout / HELLO / and listen for an echo / just to know / how deep it goes?” The text shifts abruptly from metaphor to metaphor, in one spread the flower likened to a palace and a few pages later, to human anatomy. Nevertheless, like the protagonist and the natural environment, readers will feel themselves stretch and bloom.
A visual feast teeming with life. (Picture book. 3-7)
