All Year Round

In a dreamy outing, a boy with a smiling mouth, oblong face, and eyes squinted in delight revels in the changing sounds, sights, and tastes of the seasons in brief poems for each month of the year. In May, he peers from behind a cluster of pink grass to greet a yellow butterfly: “I say hello to the butterfly, and he tells me his secret./ He has tasted the sweetness of dew./ I wish I could, too.” In October, the boy dresses up as a clown and hugs a grinning jack-o’-lantern: “And, boo!/ With my little red nose/ I am a magic clown.” Leduc’s fluid color pencil images are bathed in a muted, milky light that, along with the expressive observations within the poems, suggests a child’s growing sense of awareness of his surroundings. Ages 2–5. (Aug.)