Newbery Medalist Jean Craighead George's lyric greeting to the day celebrates how the earth turns to and then away from the sun. Starting at dawn on the East Coast, then moving to afternoon in the midwest, and finally evening in the West, young readers will meet a wide array of animals at work, rest, and play as the day progresses across America. With evocative, dramatic paintings by distinguished artist Wendell Minor, this stunning picture book provides a sweeping panorama of the American countryside as well as a remarkable look at how an animal's day parallels our own.
From School Library Journal, April 1999
PreS-Gr3 - From dawn on the east coast to sunset on the west, a variety of animals go about their daily lives. The text alternates between greetings defining the time of day ("Good noon, the noon/when the earth has turned full face to the sun/and siesta is here") and simple sentences describing the appropriate activities: The antelopes doze/ The lizard hides." Despite a few difficult words, beginning readers might join in decoding these lyrical verses. Each full-page (and sometimes double-page) painting provides a close-up of an animal, set in a suitable landscape. The pictures are inviting, combining soft textures and vibrant colors from the cardinal's scarlet feathers to the turquoise Arizona and Colorado skies. Endnotes name each creature and its location, so readers can follow along as the day progresses and the settings move farther west, from Maine to California and returning to Maine as the sun rises again on the final page. In this introduction to the nature-book genre, the portraits are realistic and accurate, but the emphasis is on visual appeal: there are several family groups, and the owlet, raccoon, and seal could model for Steiff.
From KIRKUS REVIEWS:
As the earth turns from day to night, [Jean Craighead] George ("Julie's Wolf Pack," 1997, etc.) honors creatures of the American landscape. From sunrise to sundown, flies bite, birds alight, bison laze, elk graze, bats careen, and magpies preen, as they make their way through the course of a day. From Maine to California and everywhere in between, animals welcome morning, noon, evening, and night. The Eastern Piedmont cardinal's "Cheer, cheer" ushers in sunrise; at high noon, antelopes doze and ground squirrels burrow in Arizona; the Pacific Coast owlet sings, "Who, the night, who, who" at the close of day. With repetitive strains of poetry that mimic the rhythm of a day, George says, "the earth keeps on turning, on turning, on turning." Precise horizontal paintings provide a mural of the country; while not all animals mentioned in the text are depicted, brief endnotes identify creatures and general locales by page number.
From PUBLISHERS WEEKLY - A starred review:
In precise, lyrical language George celebrates the daily activities of animals from dawn to dusk. When morning comes, "the stork puts down his other foot./The killdeer stretches her white-striped wings./ and the cardinal sings,/ Good morning, the sun. Cheer, Cheer." ... Minor, previously paired with George for "Arctic Son," offers splendid views of the countryside from Maine to the Pacific and back again. His paintings show bats in the Sonora Desert, bison in the Great Plains and Canadian geese in the Rocky Mountains. Not all the creatures George mentions fit into the serenely composed landscapes or appear in the occasional facing silhouettes; on the other hand, some pictured animals are not named in the text (endnotes, however, identify sites and species). The result is a more challenging offering than the usual nature book. Few children will be able to resist George's lullaby of animals or Minor's appealing cover portrait of a raccoon who seems to be just begging for a turn of the page.
From ABA KID'S PICK OF THE LISTS:
A soothing and rhythmic paean to the turning of the day. A cardinal greets the sun, buffalo rest at noon, deer walk in the twilight, and an owlet sings in the night. Told from the point of view of a variety of North American animals, this is an elegant and restrained bedtime book with beautiful illustrations.
-A Scholastic Book Club selection
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