There comes a moment in a new parent’s life when they realize that they have become their own parents. It’s different for everyone. For some folks it won’t happen until they’re berating their teenagers, conjuring up terms and threats from their own youth that they swore they’d never use. For others, it happens at practically the moment after conception. And for me, it happened when I read my one-year-old daughter Julie Morstad’s simply irresistible adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic poem The Swing. As I read the book aloud I realized that I had heard this poem myself as a child. I could even recall the images that accompanied it, filled with sickly sweet children with cheeks so large they’d make the Campbell Soup kids seem wan in comparison. And when later I heard my own mother recite this poem I was amazed to discover that my reading, which I’d done several time for my own daughter, contained the exact same cadences and turns of phrase as my mother’s rendition. The difference for my daughter will be the fact that while the art accompanying my The Swing was tepid, the images that appear in Julie Morstad’s gorgeous little board book are utterly lovely creations. For all those parents desperate to introduce their toddlers to poetry, or just folks who want to read their kids something beautiful for once, here is the answer to your prayers.
“How do you like to go up in a swing / Up in the air so blue?” I should think you’d like it very much if you were one of the children in Julie Morstad’s clever little book. Adapting Robert Louis Stevenson’s words, Ms. Morstad fills her pages with kids on their way up, their way down, and everywhere in-between. They glide under cherry blossoms, observe the even rows of plants and vegetables, and swing like superheroes on their bellies. The result is a haunting but thoroughly enjoyable update to a poem that feels as fresh and fun as it was the day it was first published in the late 1800s.
Etsy has been a simultaneous boon and problem for the children’s picture book world. On the one hand, there is no better place for editors to find up and coming artists. Never before has a public forum of this scope yielded such rich artistic talent. On the other hand, there is a kind of Etsy “look” that typifies the people found there. It’s what allows reviewers like myself to view certain kinds of children’s books and sniff “Etsy” when we want to put them down. Now at a first glance Morstad’s work on The Swing might strike you as falling in the Etsy vein. An unfair assumption since as far as I can tell Ms. Morstad sells her art herself and not through Etsy. More to the point, this book is better than that. Granted I wouldn’t mind taking some of the images found in the book and framing them on my wall (particularly that cover image with the black background and white haired girl swinging through a field of vibrant blossoms). But there’s a quality to Ms. Morstad’s art that feels more than merely trendy. There’s a lot of beauty here, and it
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beleave it or not this site wont get you any cash i learned it the hard way . You Probably heard of this “Offline Netspace thing” (not in BLogging) . I know Blogging is not bad if you are a great writer but wont it be better if you make 10x , 20x or maybe 50x more ! i cant give you all info here , if you are interrested join me here NOBODYSDEAD.COM feel free to contact me
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Warning ! This message is for the webmaster , i see you have a great blog . But beleave it or not this site wont get you any cash i learned it the hard way . You Probably heard of this “Offline Netspace” (not in BLogging) . I know Blogging is not bad if you are a great writer but wont it be better if you make 10x , 20x or maybe 50x more ! i cant give you all info here , if you are interrested join me here NOBODYSDEAD.COM feel free to contact me
Warning ! This message is for the webmaster , i see you have a great blog . But beleave it or not this site wont get you any cash i learned it the hard way . You Probably heard of this “Offline Netspace” (not in BLogging) . I know Blogging is not bad if you are a great writer but wont it be better if you make 10x , 20x or maybe 50x more ! i cant give you all info here , if you are interrested join me here NOBODYSDEAD.COM feel free to contact me
Warning ! This message is for the webmaster , i see you have a great blog . But beleave it or not this site wont get you any cash i learned it the hard way . You Probably heard of this “Offline Netspace” (not in BLogging) . I know Blogging is not bad if you are a great writer but wont it be better if you make 10x , 20x or maybe 50x more ! i cant give you all info here , if you are interrested join me here NOBODYSDEAD.COM feel free to contact me
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