Module 5 Sidman Poetry: Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors

Sidman, Joyce. 2009. Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors. Ill. by Pamela Zagarenski. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN-10: 9780547014944 ISBN-13: 978-0547014944

Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors is a festival of colors dancing through the four seasons. Starting in Spring and flowing Summer, Fall, to Winter the colors come alive through these wonderful poems. In spring Green is new, summer Yellow melts, fall Orange flickers, and winter Brown sways shyly is just a sample of how the colors will speak to you. This book of poems is a Caldecott Honor book for 2010.

Oh, to find a book that is a pleasure to read from beginning to end is a gift of talent and that is what Joyce Sidman has given us in this wonderful book of twenty-seven poems. The book begins with spring and continues through the seasons in a cycle that comes full circle. Even though the reading level is ages 4-8 this is a book to be enjoyed by all ages. You will capture the emotions of sight, sounds, smells, joy, anticipation and peace with your poetic walk through a year of colors. Sidman uses personification in allowing us to feel the colors, for examples, “In spring, White sounds like storms”, pg. 5 or “Red splashes fall trees”, pg.17. By Joyce Sidman using this type of personification, you will be able to visualize all the colors and experience the emotions that accompany each season. I was enamored with the narrator’s wearing the crowns of royalty including the animals. The crown symbolized the beauty of nature around us. The highlighting of the color words draws attention to the colors on the pages. Pamela Zagarenski’s artistic talent is a pleasure for the eyes. She captured and complemented Sidman’s poems by turning the pictures into works of art. I loved the red bird in nearly each picture. These pictures need to be study because there are many hidden pictures and words that heighten the meaning of the poems. This is the second collaboration with Joyce Sidman and I believe they make the perfect team. Zagarenski’s illustrations are mixed media paintings on wood and computer illustration. The text of this book is set in Oldbook ITC. Thanks Joyce Sidman and Pamela Zagarenski for this beautiful book of poems.

Fall

Orange ripens in
full, heavy moons,
thick with pulp and seed.
Orange flickers,
all smoke and candles.
Orange eyes.
Orange cheeks.
Orange teeth.
(Sidman, pp. 20)

This book is a wonderful source of colors and seasons. Red, Green, Yellow, White, Blue, Pink, Purple, Turquoise, Azure, Cerulean, Brown, Black, Gray and Orange are the colors mentioned. For kindergarten students learning their colors, this book with its poems and beautiful pictures, allows the teachers to expose the students to a variety of color sources. The pictures are great for asking the students to come up, find the color mentioned by pointing to it and then finding the color in the classroom. This book could also be used in the outdoor learning center for color recognition and discussion of the seasons. Children will be able to find the colors in everything around them. Kindergarten students would love to rhyme poems using the colors. They could use simple words like red, bed, head, blue, shoe, etc. and make their own poems. I have had kindergarten students tell me a story that I wrote down for them and then they illustrated it. The same concept can be used here and their poems and illustrations could then be posted outside the room titled “Kindergarten Poetry Wall of Fame” or the name of the class (Stars, etc.) As mentioned above, the poems are perfect for discussing the seasons and present the opportunity to revisit this book all year. This book represents a perfect media for learning colors, seasons and being exposed to poetry.