FINDING SPRING

Maurice, a little bear, can’t wait to experience his first spring, so while Mama hibernates, he goes looking for it.

Even though woodland friends Squirrel, Rabbit, Deer and Robin tell him it isn’t quite time yet, Maurice soon mistakes falling snow’s icy beauty for springtime. Cut-paper collages, enlivened by subtly placed ephemera, create manifold, bafflingly luminous and engaging illustrations. Photographed and reproduced to fill every double-page spread in this immensely pleasurable seasonal story, they offer a sense of continuum (perfect for a tale of cyclical change), luxuriant space and a wonderfully immersive reading experience. Snippets of newsprint, handwriting, lined composition paper, faded letters and old books simply beg for scrutiny. Cut-paper forms, the raised edges of which cast little shadows within the collages, challenge two-dimensionality and enchant readers. Petals, tree trunks, evergreen boughs and berry bushes appear as sculptural shapes, multidimensional and magical, bestowing on young children the same pleasurably disorienting and dazzling confusion the little bear feels when holding his first ice crystal. Maurice awakes to find his red scarf wet from the snowball he hoped to save, a sweet wink to Peter and his Snowy Day, but he also finds spring itself in all its budded, bountiful, glory.

Exceptional, exhilarating artwork perfectly suited for a story about anticipation, discovery and joy. (Picture book. 2-6)