A beautiful collection of poems exploring how different animals live and survive during the cold, winter months. ( )

Award-winning children's poet Joyce Sidman and engraver and small press operator Rick Allen, who previously collaborated on the Newbery Honor-winning title Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night, joined forces again in this poetic examination of the lives of animals and plants in winter. Twelve poems about everything from migrating tundra swans to brumating snakes, snowflake formation to arboreal wisdom, is paired with lovely artwork featuring the fauna and flora in question, as well as a curious fox who makes his way through the book. A glossary of terms, both scientific and poetic, is included at the rear...

Although Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold is the fifth picture-book I have read from Sidman, it is the first I have encountered from Allen, whose work here I found absolutely lovely. I like to look for information about artistic medium on the colophon of picture-books, and here there was a particularly extensive and quite entertaining example:

"The images for this book were made through the unlikely marriage of some very old and almost new art mediums. The individual elements of each picture (the animals, trees, snowflakes, etc.), were cute, inked and printed from linoleum blocks (nearly two hundred of them), and then hand-colored. Those prints were then digitally scanned, composed, and layered to create the illustrations for the poems. The somewhat surprising (and oddly pleasing) result was learning that the slow and backwards art of relief printmaking could bring modern technology down to its level, making everything even more complex and time-consuming."

This description was sufficiently charming that I found myself seeking out the website for Allen's Kenspeckle Letterpress, where I spent a good hour exploring his artwork. Time well spent!

As delightful as the visuals here were—unsurprisingly, given my love of foxes, it was the cover image which first drew me to this one—the poetry was every bit as appealing, and I enjoyed all twelve selections, as well as the factual notes accompanying them. Certain phrases just stood out to me—"our wings knew," in reference to the tundra swans; the description of the mass of bees as burning like a golden sun—while in other cases I was most interested in the form used. Sidman employs both a pantoum (Under Ice) and a triolet (Triolet for Skunk Cabbage) in this collection. All that being said, I think my favorite was What Do the Trees Know?

"What do the trees know?
To bed when all the wild winds blow.
Roots are deep and time is slow.
All we grasp we must let go.

What do the trees know?
Buds can weather ice and snow.
Dark gives way to sunlight's glow.
Strength and stillness help us grow."

If I have any criticism to make of this one, it is that I would have wished to see a poem featuring the fox. That being said, his presence is felt throughout, so perhaps we are meant to identify with him, making his way through the wintry world and observing it, just as we are meant to do. Recommended to young poetry readers and animal lovers, and to picture-book readers looking for wintry titles. ( )

2.5
I liked the artwork, it was lovely. I also appreciated the facts that they included with each poem. But I wasn't really impressed by the poems themselves. I did like the triolet, but not much else. ( )

This poetry book is a book that consists of many different poems. I really liked this book because after every poem there is an explanation of why what happened in the poem happened, and also a vocabulary list of some words. I would highly recommend this book to ELAR teachers for their poetry units! ( )

The poem Winter Bees is the best one in this collection of lovely poems. The illustrations are inviting and cozy. ( )