Poems for Every Season

Varied verse types evoke nature’s seasonal milestones in this splendid month-by-month collection. Haiku introduce each Northern Hemisphere season, beginning with March and concluding in February, presenting unique forms, including rondel and diamond-shaped synonym diamante. May’s knowing double dactyl, “Knock Knock,” announces spring as a time of growth (“Rappety-tappety,/ Somebody hammering./ Probably a woodpecker,/ Carving a nest”), while November centers creature comforts, with a hedgehog narrating the serviceably titled rondelet “Hibernation” (“All curled up in my cozy bed,/ I’m warm and safe and dry”). Westera also introduces an original style—a “stacking poem”—that speaks to January’s “white as the goose’s tail” landscape. Boerendans’s finely etched colored woodcuts offer rich and companionable portraits of the species featuring in facing page poems—the result is a creaturely calendar of seasonal change. Back matter discusses the verse forms employed. Ages 5–9. (Feb.)