All’s Right with the World

“The year’s at the spring,/ and day’s at the morn.” Adding new lines to Robert Browning’s “Pippa’s Song,” Adams (A Book, Too, Can Be a Star) creates a portrait of ordinary life in which “All’s right with the world.” Via crisp spreads that foreground a diverse city community, Neal (If You Live Here) introduces a child portrayed with light brown skin, showing their morning in progress. After an adult helps the child into a striped shirt and offers a hug over breakfast (“Waffles with berries,/ umbrella, red tulips”), a Black-cued friend who lives in an adjacent brownstone joins them, the children waiting with their caregivers for the crossing guard (“We set out for school./ All’s right with the world”). Later, following an afternoon of play, the neighbors eat together on the rooftop—“We hold hands in thanks./ All’s right with the world”—before the families are seen engaging in bedtime routines. Throughout, images that show feelings of contentment, gestures of affection, and glimpses of bird and insect life establish a sense of security and abundance, while lines interleave contemporary pleasures into the old poem. Ages 4–8. (Mar.)