MONDAY

In a spare, deceptively simple meditation on time, change and renewal, Monday visits comfortably with friends Lester Day and Tom Morrow (get it?) but, increasingly bemused as entire successive seasons burst in with whirls of poetry—“I am Spring, / I am green, / I abound. / Into the wind I put its rustling sound. / I quiver, timid in the pinkness of a bud”—at last fades outright into a winter snowstorm. A large die-cut hole frames the human-limbed, bird-headed Monday on the front cover, and occasional embossing adds tactile interest to the simply brushed landscapes inside. Herbauts artfully caps Monday’s departure with a totally blank page, but then brings him back at the end, in new garb and fully human. Readers sensitive to subtle verbal and visual nuances will best appreciate this semi-abstract Belgian import. (Picture book. 7-10)