CLABBERED DIRT, SWEET GRASS

A lyrical and sensual celebration of four seasons on the American farm. Paulsen—a prolific and Newbery-winning children's author who's been venturing into the adult market lately (the thriller Kill Fee, 1990, etc.)—brings to this slim but rich appreciation a passion and wisdom not evident in his last adult nonfiction book, 1977's Farm. And also a burnished—at times preciously so—literary style, based on astute observation, wonderfully exact language, and definite cadence: "[The thresher machine] holds, oh yes it holds, and the grates begin to shuffle back and forth, the small saw teeth ripple like water, oh yes, the keyway holds and the machine—she—groans and heaves and humps and bucks and in a great crashing of noise and year-old dust and mouse nests it is there. It is there." Paulsen begins with his inspiration for the book—a moving encounter with an 82-year-old farmer whore beloved horse has just died—and then devotes an essay to each season, spring to winter, drawing on his own memories and telling stories he's heard to evoke and honor—sometimes with considerable power—farm life. And the nine postimpressionist paintings by Ruth Wright Paulsen, the author's wife, nicely complement his colorful prose.