Love this author – love this illustrator – love this author and illustrator combo – love this book. That’s a lot of love, but if you read this book I think you’ll agree with me. I don’t remember how I came across the illustrator Mark Hearld, but my guess (and hope) is that we will be seeing and hearing a lot more from this talented British artist. His mixed media work reminds me of Eric Carle, but colorful and vibrant in a fresh new way.
Award-winning children’s author and biologist Nicola Davies provides the perfect poetry to go along with the artwork, to vividly present the abundance of our four seasons. The simplest but most amazing of things in nature – a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis in spring, bees buzzing and providing sweet honey in summer, a spider weaving a silken web in autumn and the way nature rests in winter, are all beautifully presented. The writer says about writing the book, “I cast off my grown-up self and found the me I was at five or six. From inside that younger self I could see the world as I saw it first – not just the sights and sounds of nature but also the feelings and the thoughts about it that ran through me.”
Reading this book should make every child and every adult want to go out and explore all that nature has to offer in every season – just outside their window.