Autumnblings

Florian, Douglas (2003). Autumnblings. New York: Greenwillow Books

This delightful little book welcomes the onset of autumn and carries through to the beginning of winter. The book is a compilation of poems all written by one poet. These short poems savor the rich colours and flavours of that short term between summer and winter. The rhymes are simple, never contrived just to fit the rhythm. Many have assonance, alliteration, and two use onomatopoeia to control the speed of the poem. At times, Florian uses concrete poetry to better illustrate the feeling of the poem’s movement. The vast chevron of geese, soaring across two pages captures the wonder of seeing those great birds migrating each year. The poet uses a great deal of couplet form in his poems. These are written for younger children, but would appeal to all ages.

This book is illustrated in the hues of autumn. Lots of orange, gold, creams, and browns. Occasionally, the colour blue is used to break up the homogeny of the other colours. At first I thought the colours really enhanced the feelings invoked by the poems, but then my husband glanced at them and he could not see many of the things in the pictures. The colours were too close on the spectrum for someone who is shade blind. With as many as 8 percent of boys have some form of shade blindness to complete colour blindness, it is essential that the teacher/librarian knows his or her class well enough so that if it includes any students who have any color blindness, he/she can choose other books with more distinctive colour variations. Even if the student is completely colour blind, they will be able to see the where the colours change.

From School Library JournalGrade 2-5-Florian again displays his significant skill at wordplay in this companion to Winter Eyes (1999) and Summersaults (2002, both Greenwillow). Using simple rhyme schemes; invented words such as "autumnatically," "owlphabet," "fallicopters" (maple seeds); and descriptive spellings ("hi-bear-nation," "industree"), he demonstrates that reading and writing can be lots of fun. His poems call to mind all manner of things autumnal-falling leaves, cool days, ripe apples, frost-and of the feelings that go with them ("-autumn leaves/Leave me in awe"). The childlike style of the various-sized watercolor and colored-pencil paintings (in fall colors, of course) mirrors the creative style of the age group most inclined to read the poetry. A natural for use in classrooms and library programs, and accessible to newly independent readers, these poems will delight youngsters.Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OHCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistK-Gr. 2. In his third collection of seasonal poetry, Florian presents a winsome series of poems about fall, with the punning theme of the title carried throughout. Using rhyme, meter, and those puns to good effect, as well as changes in fonts and type, he adds to the sense of movement and joy in the poetry. School, holidays, playtime, and observation all figure here: A "Tree-tice" (treatise) on arithmetics combines leaves and counting; "Geese Piece" answers the question it poses by its placement in the vee formation of Canada goose migration. The watercolor-and-colored-pencil art is best at its simplest: a single red-purple apple on golden ground; a flame-colored leaf and bough reminiscent of Japanese brush painting. Pull this out with Steven Schnur's Autumn: An Alphabet Acrostic (1999) and Cynthia Rylant's In November (2000). GraceAnne DeCandidoCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Connections could be used as a great beginning to any study of the seasons. It could be used when studying holidays by reading the poems in this book along with other poems about Holloween.
So long as your take into consideration colour blindness, Art teachers can use use this to help children study colour spectrums.
Florian has written other books about seasons, Winter Eyes, Handsprings, and Summersaults. They could be used to compare with this book, or other books about Autumn by other authors.