Natsumi's Song of Summer
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Publisher Description
This sweet and gentle picture book celebrates summer in Japan, as one little girl shares her love for bugs with her cousin who is visiting from America.
Two young cousins who are separated by language, continent and culture meet for the first time when Jill's family travels from America to Japan to stay with Natsumi's family during the summer holidays. Natsumi's nervousness about meeting her cousin from across the sea quickly disappears when she discovers that her cousin is a lot like her: they both love summertime's hot sandy beaches, cool refreshing watermelon, festivals and fireworks. Then Jill asks Natsumi about the strange buzzing sound that comes from the nearby trees, and Natsumi is nervous once again. What if Jill is frightened of Natsumi's cherished cicadas, the insects that sing the music of summertime?
This is a tender, evocative story that celebrates the special pleasures of summertime and of reunions with faraway family and friends.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Weston writes his tale in elegant tanka, a form defined in his author's note it's a haiku-like poem with two additional lines of seven syllables each. Natsumi's summer pleasures include "sun, the heat, the cool bursts/ of plum rain, heavy and sweet." This summer, her cousin Jill, whom she has never met, comes to Japan to share in those enjoyments. They become fast friends, but Natsumi hesitates before showing Jill the cicadas whose calls fill the air: "Insects frightened some people./ What if Jill was frightened, too?" In Saburi's digital art, the two cousins are wide-eyed, doll-like figures; Jill, with dark brown skin and black hair, peers into the tree branches as pink-skinned Natsumi worries. Fortunately, Jill loves the cicadas, and when she learns that the insects wait for years before emerging "to meet their friends," she spots the parallel: "Just like us," she tells Natsumi. Saburi's thick black lines recall traditional Japanese woodblock prints, and she portrays the creatures and summer flowers that Natsumi treasures in rich detail. In the collaborators' (Sakura's Cherry Blossoms) handling, Natsumi's cross-cultural friendship with Jill centers on a shared love of natural life and models openness to new experiences. Ages 3 7.
