Celebrate the Season: Fall

Elizabeth St Jacques is the author of Echoes All Strung Out and
Survivors: The Great Depression, 1929-1939.

Introducing these seven delightfully dreamlike stories and nine songs,
author and storyteller Allen Morgan says, “Whatever your own inner
dream may be, there’s room for it here in the following stories. Let
it come out, let your dream become real.”

Principal characters are Michael and his friend, Megan, who live near
the woods and discover some very interesting things: how the Windman can
be called for help, how a raccoon can tell exactly what Summer is
dreaming, how a squirrel will become a friend when given a very unusual
pie, that Summer wears “sleeping socks,” and that a certain tree in
Autumn is actually afraid of to let its leaves fall.

Filled with comfortable dialogue, charming rhymes, vivid sounds, music,
repetition, color, and fascinating storylines, these stories offer good
fun, while Vladyana Krykorka’s enchanting artwork generates a pleasing
sense of life and movement. But “Leaving the First Land” and “The
Seasons Find a New Home,” which take place “a long time ago ... even
before the Native Indians were here” and which introduce the four
Seasons and Windman, would have been better placed at the very
beginning, before Michael and Megan enter the picture. Also, stories of
six to twelve pages seem unusually long for children aged 4 to 8, who
generally have short attention spans. Still, they are worth the effort.
Recommended.