A Year of Nature Poems
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley January 23, 2019
Author Joseph Coelho, illustrated by Kelly Louise Judd
Distributor: Murdoch Books
ISBN: 9781786035820
Publisher: Quarto UK
Release Date: January 2019
Website: https://www.murdochbooks.com.au
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Beautifully illustrated this gorgeous series of twelve poems, one each dedicated to the months of the year, make a wonderful treasury of thanksgiving and understanding of the some of the very many things that go to make up the simple pleasures of our world today.
Joseph Coelho and Kelly Louise Judd, in A Year of Nature Poems have created a gentle and delicate volume of prose, with each month presenting a fact based on the following piece of poetry. Although set out for the Northern hemisphere the words and illustrations are simply beautiful in their context.
The carefully chosen pieces begin with January, in a pieced dedicated to Starlings and the legend that surrounds them remaining from the 16th century, when a flock of Starling warred over the City of Cork in Ireland; a phenomenon not ever known before or since. The metre is gentle, melodious and captivating.
Frogs, daffodils and climate change make their way across the pages with inviting illustrations, and in May we meet the Mayfly, a wonderous insect who spends several years in the larval stage before emerging and living its life at full speed, for just one hour only.
June heralds in the Summer Solstice in the Northern Climes and the Winter Solstice in the Southern hemisphere, with the poetry paying tribute to a time of celebration for many cultures when the sun is at its highest, radiating light and warmth.
Scrumping, a term foreign to many parts of the world but well known in Britain, is the ‘stealing’ of the left-over fruits of the trees and vines at the end of a long, plentiful and hot Northern summer, has been dedicated to August. You can feel children climbing the massive old tree is search of pear tree spoils, the ripe fruit on the grape vines, delicious in their taste, the juicy plums snatched from the Nuns walled garden; such summer time fun.
November sees the trees beginning to lose their leaves, the animals preparing for a time of hibernation, getting ready for the long, cold chill of the winter to come, but when December finally arrives, snowflakes falling, it brings a promise of a white Christmas, a reminder that to achieve something of great beauty, such as a snowflake, hard work needs to first be done.
A Year of Nature Poems is a glorious celebration of the Months of the year, suitable for all ages and a wonderful medium for reading aloud, for older children learning to enjoy the real beauty of poetry, with illustrations to enhance the moment, and for older readers who totally enjoy wonderful combinations of words used to create so many marvellous pictures in the mind.