Mary Casanova offers “a pine bough swaying lullaby” and “a frog croak-croaking lullaby” and “two swans born today” and “snowshoe hare, eyes so wide.”
Jordan Sundberg offers deep vibrant colors of a sunset walk through the trees and along the water of the Northwoods, engaging and a little strange, brisk and warm and tender.
Northwoods Lullaby is a lovely and touching poem-book for children ages three to eight. It was written by Casanova and illustrated by Sundberg, and it tells of an afternoon a young girl and her mother spend in the world of nature in which they live. They see baby loons and fox kits and a nuthatch nesting.
And, through the magic of Sundberg’s art, they are seen, not just by the reader, but even more by those creatures with whom they share this forest world. They are seen—taking a rest, walking atop a hill, inside their home in a room filled with the mother’s lullaby—just as they see those members of animal families during their walk.
And there are others the young girl and her mother don’t see but still know to be there, such as:
Born inside,
a cozy den,
wolf pups pounce and prowl.
Such as:
In the grass,
baby deer,
born at early dawn.
There is a quiet to Northwoods Lullaby, even with all the croaking of frogs and the howling of young wolves for their Mama and Papa to get back with their food. There is a serenity to being in and of the natural world.
The girl and her mother are not here and among these trees as tourists but as neighbors, as fellow citizens of the republic of nature.
Amid the garishness of much of modern life, particularly items marketed to children, Northwoods Lullaby is a kind of a gentle hug, a kind smile, a nod that, yes, the world is a place of life and beauty and love.
Amid the garishness of much of modern life, particularly items marketed to children, Northwoods Lullaby is a kind of a gentle hug, a kind smile, a nod that, yes, the world is a place of life and beauty and love.
In its beauty and rhythms, Northwoods Lullaby reminded me of the many, many, many times I read Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon to our son and daughter. Both books are a tranquil way to bring a child’s long, exciting day to a peaceful close.
Because Northwoods Lullaby actually is a lullaby, it reminded me of Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever in which a mother sings to her young son, “I’ll love you forever. I’ll like you for always. As long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.” At the end of the book, the mother, now very old, is held in the arms of her son who sings the same song with the final line “…As long as I’m living my Mommy you’ll be.”
On the last page of Northwoods Lullaby, a QR code is offered to a recording of the lullaby set to music. That’s a nice option for a parent, but I like the do-it-yourself approach that my wife and I developed with Love You Forever.
As I’d read it in a child’s nearly dark bedroom, I loved to make up a tune to the song the mother sang to her son and, later, vice versa.
A parent doesn’t need to make up a tune for the whole of Northwoods Lullaby. Its flow and poetic rhythm are tuneful enough. But, maybe, when the story gets to its end, a parent might want to make up a melody to the final verse:
It’s time to sing a lullaby,
a pine bough swaying lullaby,
a lady’s-slipper lullaby…
because I love you.
Northwoods Lullaby is available at bookstores and through the University of Minnesota Press website.
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