A MOON FOR SEASONS

Known for historical fiction (Katie's Trunk, 1992, etc.), Turner's also an accomplished poet (Grass Songs, 1993). Here she turns to nature in a tightly structured cycle of 28 (a lunar number) short poems about the seasons in a northeastern woodland. Each of four septets opens with a poem about the moon, and the entire cycle is stitched together by recurrent appearances of other ``characters'': an owl, a porcupine, herons, and especially frogs, whose activities Turner employs (as Marilyn Singer used bullheads in Turtle in July) as emblems of seasonal change. There is also an ``I'' that ``tastes sky'' (snowflakes), looks through a telescope at geese flying across the moon, sits under a maple lapped by ``waves'' of light and shadow, and buries bones found in the forest with a ``blessing of leaves.'' Noreika's full-bleed watercolors capture the varied lights and colors of weather, time, and seasons. His most dramatic painting, accompanying ``Forest Time,'' a poem about ``death's sundial'' (a circle of feathers marking the spot where an owl has killed a blue jay), shows an unsuspecting jay overlaid by the owl's shadow just before it strikes. Spare and serious; memorable images, verbal and visual. (Poetry/Picture book. 6+)