Caldecott Books : "Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems" (2006 Honor Book)

This book is about how a year’s seasons unfold against the backdrop of a pond. Prange’s watercolored woodcuts are beautiful; the thick lines are a vibrant counterpoint to the gentle but vivid colorations depicting amphibians, fish, birds, and the entire ecosystem of nature surrounding a pond. It’s a curious and immersive mix of different types of poetry, science, nature, and the ever-changing seasons of life.

Some picture books are fast, some are slow. Some are narrative, some conceptual. This is the latter on both counts. A slow, conceptual description, in words and visual, of how life in different forms exists around an untitled pond. It’s a slow, slow read. That’s not a bad thing.

It’s the kind of book I read in sections. Perhaps a poem or two or three at a time. After we’ve read, we might go through a half dozen more times to carefully peruse the art and look for different types of creatures, or to admire the ways lines and texture and color converge to make something beautiful and singular.

One of misconceptions so many adults have about young children - or children period - is that their attention span is almost non-existent.

Not true.

What kids need is for adults, and all those around them, to practice.

We need to practice modeling what attention is, what patience is, what it means to sometimes sloooowly engage and interact with something that’s not immediately entertaining.

Like this book.

We miss out on so much if we just stick to our gut instinct or visceral reactions to something new. How many times do you hear a variation of:

“That’s boring!”

Probably a lot.

I love exciting things. I love adrenaline and loud music and running hard and page-turning thrillers and whodunits and things that are super easy to get into. Things that grab you right away. Stories that enfold you quickly.

I think it helps to appreciate that end of things more by choosing to embrace the flip side: the music that’s a slow grow, the films that make you read a different language, the stories that wrap you in character before a plot emerges, a book that has you slowly examine each page, and slowly read each poem aloud, savoring the lines and the way they all work together…

Is this on my all-time favorites list? No, probably not. But I can appreciate it. And I think that’s a valuable gift we can pass along:

The gift of learning how to appreciate something that slowly reveals its beauty.

Cool bonus: this heavily applies to relationships with people as well.

It brought me joy to see the slow joy brought to our three-year old as he re-read one more time before returning to the library; carefully searching for beetles, amphibians, and fish throughout.

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