Fern Hill

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

“All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay fields high
as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air and playing,
lovely and water and fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple
stars as I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, all the
moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars flying with the
ricks and the horses flashing into the dark.”

Fern Hill is possibly Dylan Thomas’s greatest work. The glorious poem
celebrates childhood through the eyes of a young farm lad who sees the
world as a series of speeding icons. Thomas’s imagery hurtles by at a
breakneck speed, creating a verbal vertigo for the reader. Any
illustrator foolhardy enough to take on this poem is just asking to be
ignominiously dumped at the sharp corners.

Nevertheless, Governor General’s award-winning illustrator Murray
Kimber takes up the challenge and survives to tell the tale. Kimber
matches Thomas image for runaway image. Birds wheel, horses gallop,
clotheslines flap, and the narrator never seems to be at rest. Even the
paintings of static objects crackle with energy and seem ready to lift
off the page. This lovely book is highly recommended.