Blooming Beneath the Sun

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY FEB 18, 2019

Bryan illustrates late-19th-century poems by Rossetti with intricate cut-paper shapes that combine bold images with blazing color. Rossetti's poems record encounters with nature in cadences and rhyme schemes reminiscent of nursery verse. Some are well-known ("Who has seen the wind?/ Neither I nor you"), while others are more obscure ("I dreamt I caught a little owl/ And the bird was blue"). Bryan creates motion and grandness with cut paper throughout, in one landscape spread using strips of undulating gray to make ocean waves ("The wind has such a rainy sound"). Elsewhere, a peacock displays its tail in full glory, the blue feathers highlighted with red and yellow cut-outs ("The peacock has a score of eyes,/ with which he cannot see"). Exuberant art complements these well-regarded poems, revealing their perhaps undervalued playfulness. Ages 4 8.