In children’s literature a book is only as good as its illustrations and layout. Summer by Cao Wenxuan with illustrations by Yu Rong is a great illustration of a book that is more than the sum of its parts. Summer starts out with dreamy, pencil-like illustrations of a savannah and the typical creatures that you’d see there. An elephant, lynx, jackal, rhino and others all coexist in the heat. The opening pages of summer match the slower pacing of the season perfectly. As the book goes on the continued heat shortens the patience of our characters and speeds up the pace of the book. The result is a slow build of a book that pays off with reader’s smiling due to the story, its graphic design and colors.
It’s a testament to musical artists when their releases take on the personality and feel of their title. Alice in Chains did this with Dirt. That release is a benchmark in varied pace grunge that made dirt something you didn’t mind hanging out with. Summer does this too, except it manages to do it at the peak of the day in an already inhospitable area. This book feels hot and this is one bit of heat that you won’t mind feeling.
All of the animals are hot. There’s not much shade and even fewer trees to provide said shelter. Sometimes it’s the bigger animals that win the break from the sun and other times it’s the small animals that can sneak into the nooks and crannies of the tree. But, everybody has their breaking point and even the non-anthropomorphic animals in Summer get short at each other when it gets too hot.
It’s right about here when they all see a father and son walking across the arid grassland. They notice that the shadow of the much taller father is shading his son. All of the animals realize that between all of them they have a variety of sizes and could probably do the same thing.
This is where the layout of the book seals the deal and delivers the payoff. The first page is 1/6 with a lowly lynx providing shade to a mouse. The next sixth of a page has the jackal giving shade to those two. Other bigger animals join the shade train until they’re all much cooler, when a cloud floats by and provides relief to them all.
It’s a book about the heat of summer, combined with a lesson about sharing with other, as well as being patient. OK, that last one isn’t too much of a lesson, but kids will enjoy looking at the art, reading the poetry and deciding which animal is their favorite. The text is simple enough for second graders to read by themselves. There are some sight words for emerging readers to practice on and that age will love the animals and final pages where they provide shade for one another.
The other thing about Summer is that it feels like it could be part of a series. Granted that’s due to the fact that we know something happens after summer, but if Wenxuan and Rong are able to produce as high a quality tale for fall, winter or spring we’d be all in.
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