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Summary
Summary
Twelve poems follow a family and their friends through the seasons. A Caldecott Honor Book.
Author Notes
American novelist, poet, and critic John Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on March 18, 1932. He received an A.B. degree from Harvard University, which he attended on a scholarship, in 1954. After graduation, he accepted a one-year fellowship to study painting at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford, England. After returning from England in 1955, he worked for two years on the staff of The New Yorker. This marked the beginning of a long relationship with the magazine, during which he has contributed numerous short stories, poems, and book reviews.
Although Updike's first published book was a collection of verse, The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures (1958), his renown as a writer is based on his fiction, beginning with The Poorhouse Fair (1959). During his lifetime, he wrote more than 50 books and primarily focused on middle-class America and their major concerns---marriage, divorce, religion, materialism, and sex. Among his best-known works are the Rabbit tetrology---Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1988). Rabbit, Run introduces Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom as a 26-year-old salesman of dime-store gadgets trapped in an unhappy marriage in a dismal Pennsylvania town, looking back wistfully on his days as a high school basketball star. Rabbit Redux takes up the story 10 years later, and Rabbit's relationship with representative figures of the 1960s enables Updike to provide social commentary in a story marked by mellow wisdom and compassion in spite of some shocking jolts. In Rabbit Is Rich, Harry is comfortably middle-aged and complacent, and much of the book seems to satirize the country-club set and the swinging sexual/social life of Rabbit and his friends. Finally, in Rabbit at Rest, Harry arrives at the age where he must confront his mortality. Updike won the Pulitzer Prize for both Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest.
Updike's other novels range widely in subject and locale, from The Poorhouse Fair, about a home for the aged that seems to be a microcosm for society as a whole, through The Court (1978), about a revolution in Africa, to The Witches of Eastwick (1984), in which Updike tries to write from inside the sensibilities of three witches in contemporary New England. The Centaur (1963) is a subtle, complicated allegorical novel that won Updike the National Book Award in 1964. In addition to his novels, Updike also has written short stories, poems, critical essays, and reviews. Self-Consciousness (1989) is a memoir of his early life, his thoughts on issues such as the Vietnam War, and his attitude toward religion. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. He died of lung cancer on January 27, 2009 at the age of 76.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-5 Updike's poetry and Hyman's glowing illustrations lovingly portray a year in the life of a child in this celebration of months and seasons. Originally published in 1965 (Knopf) with illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert, the verses examine the changes in the natural world, from crocuses poking through the ground in February to blooming chrysanthemums in September and the first snowfall of December. There is a sense of relaxed timelessness here. Updike urges readers to stop and enjoy the glories in each day, such as in March when "The mud smells happy/On our shoes./We still wear mittens,/Which we lose." When read aloud, the poetry sings from one stanza to the next through gentle rhymes and rhythms that are never forced. Readers familiar with Hyman's illustrations for Barbara Rogasky's Winter Poems (Scholastic, 1994) will recognize the artist's New Hampshire farmhouse setting, her grandchildren, family, friends, and even the charming pets. The paintings have an unpretentious, homey quality as they capture boys exploring in a creek, a toddler's bare-bottomed joy in the August sunshine, and a family's contemplative stroll beneath bare November maples. Readers will recognize bits and pieces of their own lives in this reflective gem. Shawn Brommer, Southern Tier Library System, Painted Post, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
letter day for poetry lovers. Each month receives its due in shiveringly lovely verse while Hyman's brightly populated watercolors trace the corresponding activities of a lively Vermont family. The interplay of text and art has both depth and beauty. The language and illustrations are not merely pretty or ornamentally descriptive, but vibrantly aliveÄenough to keep young readers occupied through more than one reading. Crisp images from the poems are amplified or buried like treasures in the artwork. In March, "Pale crocuses/ Poke through the ground/ Like noses come/ To sniff around," while the family is pictured tending the sheep that likewise burrow their noses into waiting hands. Familiar things are made new with the grace and freshness of Updike's simple and accessible imagery. In June, for example, "The live-long light/ Is like a dream,/ And freckles come/ Like flies to cream." A breathtaking book that will unfold the world to new readers: "each flower, leaf,/ And blade of turfÄ/ Small love-notes sent/ From air to earth." Ages 4-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Updike's one-for-each-month poems are slightly revised and newly illustrated with Trina Schart Hyman's homey depictions of a contemporary family, lending fresh appeal to the seasonal celebrations. From HORN BOOK Spring 2000, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Updike has revised a set of 12 short poems, one per month, first published in 1965, and Hyman's busy, finely detailed scenes replace the original edition's illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. The verses are written in a child's voice'``The chickadees/Grow plump on seed/That Mother pours/Where they can feed'''and commemorate seasonal weather, flowers, food, and holidays. In the paintings a multiracial, all-ages cast does the same in comfortable, semi-rural New England surroundings, sitting at a table cutting out paper hearts, wading through reeds with a net under a frog's watchful eye, picnicking, contemplating a leafless tree outside for ``November'' and a decorated one inside for ``December.'' The thoughts and language are slightly elevated but not beyond the ken of children, and the pictures enrich the poetry with specific, often amusing, incidents. (Poetry. 6-10)
Booklist Review
Gr. 3^-5, younger for reading aloud. First published in 1965, Updike's calendar presents a child-centered poem for each month of the year. Hyman's colorful illustrations portray a multiracial family living in rural New Hampshire through the changes of seasons. But the landscape and weather are only backdrops for the activities that define the seasons for young people: sledding, kite flying, planting, watching baseball on TV, wading in the creek, picnicking, swimming, choosing apples, trick-or-treating, giving thanks around the table, and waiting for Christmas. A full-page painting and a smaller panel illustrate each month. Each evocative illustration has its own story to tell, celebrating the small moments in children's lives with clarity and sensitivity, with empathy and joy. A beautifully illustrated edition of Updike's poems for children. --Carolyn Phelan
Library Journal Review
Gr 1-5-A year in New England as seen through a child-focused lens. Month by month, season by season, the poet's words and the expressive paintings create images that are reflective and playful, perceptive and pleasing. (Sept.) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.