Seasoning the Season with Words: A Child’s Calendar

A few days ago it was about ninety degrees outside, but it was an unmistakably autumn ninety: windy, the air full of those little yellow leaves that are the first to surrender. I’ve been enjoying the season with its mixed bag of emotions, and this book has been a lovely companion. Written by John Updike, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman, these poems are truly (as Susan at Chicken Spaghetti puts it) “for children and the rest of us, too.”

Take “September,” which begins,

The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel –

It proceeds through a catalogue of fall sensory details and concludes,

Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.

To me these poems get the details just right. Open the book, and the sights, sounds, and smells of fall waft upward from the page like magic. Each month gets a double-page spread with Hyman’s sensitive, detailed illustrations of a multiracial family enjoying the activities of each season in the New England countryside.

September and October are glorious, but always November is lurking in the wings. So I was encouraged to read Updike’s lines about this grim reaper of a month. I’ll pass them on here as a blessing on the coming weeks:

The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The loss of her
Departed leaves.

The ground is hard,
As hard as stone.
The year is old,
The birds are flown.

And yet the world,
Nevertheless,
Displays a certain
Loveliness –

The beauty of the bone.

Here’s hoping today yields its beauty to you.