What can I say,this is just simply a beautiful collection of poems. Sometimes I go outside, read one and just sink into the loveliness of the wild around me. These poems just really are beautiful. Highly recommended

From The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books:

With this graceful book, Coleman and Masheris offer children the best reason to cherish both nature and poetry--for the sheer beauty of it. Coleman's twenty-one poems open with an invitation.

"Bicycle Trip

A poem
is like an
unplanned
trip by bicycle.
The wind of Words
blows in your ears.
Jack-in-the-pulpits.
Lady Slippers
become the handlebars.
You begin to understand
fireplugs shining in the sun,
the wild toss of bachelor buttons.
The limits of the street change, shrink--
two lane highways, a country road.
Then with an unexpected lurch
thought turns into a side dirt path
where stones and pine straw lie
and hickories grow, shaggy and gray.
A lake opens, a mountain roars.
Surprised, you're part of the landscape.

The movement of short lines to long reflects an gradually widening view, both visually and imaginatively, and the illustration that envelopes the poem also extends it across the page into a delicately tinted jungle if wildflowers. Various animals, plants, and habitats figure in the poems and pictures that follow, all bearing a close complementary relationship to one another and to the reader. This is a book that poetry buffs will want to linger over and that readers new to poetry will find alluring.

This collection of poems by Mary Ann Coleman is wonderful. She has a special way of making the simplest detail in nature awe-inspiring. The illustrations are stunning! I highly recommend it to children and adults alike.