GRASSROOTS

Minor’s signature watercolors, limpid and bright, make a visual hymn to the Midwest and thereby echo the poems of Carl Sandburg. These poems, replete with images of fields, frogs, horses, and harvests, are arranged roughly in order of early spring to late winter. The title poem, “Grassroots,” “puts fingers into the dark dirt” while a hawk flies over a field just turning golden under an opalescent sky. A two-page diptych called “Still Life” shows a steam train as it passes village, horses, and cows. For a snowman, the poem is “Metamorphosis”—“When water turns ice does it remember/one time it was water?/When ice turns back into water does it/remember it was ice?” The book closes with the beautiful “Red and White” (“O I have loved red roses and O I have loved white snow”) with an equally beautiful painting. An ode to a place, and a worthy introduction to Sandburg’s poetry. (Picture book/poetry. 6-11)