Before we start chatting about specific 2014 picture books, take a moment to read the Caldecott criteria. They're posted over there on the right, but I will help you find the important parts. Here they are, in part:

1. Excellence of execution in the artistic technique employed;


2. Excellence of pictorial interpretation of story, theme, or concept;


3. Appropriateness of style of illustration to the story, theme or concept;


4. Delineation of plot, theme, characters, setting, mood or information through the pictures;


5. Excellence of presentation in recognition of a child audience.

Tattoo those categories onto the inside of your eyelids so you will understand why, when we talk about books, we stick to the same points over and over. We have to. The committee discusses all books in light of the published criteria, and the chair keeps everyone close to these five main ideas. 

It's tricky to start our discussion this year with a collection of poems, because it brings up the age-old question of whether this is a picture book or an illustrated book. I refer you to the definitions. Let's just agree (for the moment, at least) that this fits the definition of a picture book as it is essentially a visual experience. Feel free to say otherwise in the comments. That's just not where I want to go at the moment.

This handsome volume presents 8 to 10 poems per season and, just as the subtitle says ("A Year of Very Short Poems"), each poem is very short. This gives the volume a clear arc and allows the illustrations to gently explore how color and line might change over the course of a year, as the seasons unfold. The paper cover and the case cover are the same, and the endpapers are a lovely muted blue. Though I am generally a fan of flashy endpapers, it makes sense that these are calm, given the energy that illustrator Melissa Sweet brings to each spread.

Spring is the first season, and the first page is a celebration of spring things, including a robin, which I love. There are also daffodils and other early-spring bulbs blooming. The small poems march on, but it is the illustrations that hold them together. As we move to summer, the Langston Hughes poem "Subway Rush Hour" is made summery by the bouquet of daisies that accompanies it. Summer moves on and the colors change as the leaves fall. The transition is seamless; indeed, the divisions between the seasons are subtle and easy to miss, much like the artificial dates on the calendar that mark the change. By wintertime, the hues have completely changed--darkened by the lack of sun, yet whitened by the presence of snow.

Sweet's art, a joyous combination of watercolor, gouache, and mixed-media collage, tells each poem's story while allowing the young reader to consider each poem for herself. Her use of color and line build each illustration, sometimes joining two poems (such as" Fog" and "Uses for Fog") together on a double-page spread, other times allowing the gutter to divide the scenes. The art is completely appropriate to the collection; indeed, it's her illustrations that make these poems accessible to the child audience (and here the audience could be as young as 3 and as old as an appreciative adult). The mood is set by the illustrations, and Sweet does not bore the reader with trite homages to each season--she requires the reader to look deeper at each spread and think about the connection to the words.

I just looked up the part of the definitions about the term "distinguished," and here that is:

1. 
   
   “Distinguished” is defined as:
   
   
   
   
   1. Marked by eminence and distinction; noted for significant achievement.
   
   
   2. Marked by excellence in quality.
   
   
   3. Marked by conspicuous excellence or eminence.
   
   
   4. Individually distinct.
   
   
   
   

Most of the books we will talk about this fall and winter are distinguished, and this one certainly is. Each spread is filled with emotion and care, with design meshing seamlessly with color and line. There are many places to look, but it never looks busy or overdone, as each page turn creates its own little world.

Though the real committee can (and will) compare this book to Sweet's other 2014 title (The Right Word), I have found it difficult to do that in a single blog post. So, feel free to compare if you wish, but know that Martha will be talking about that one soon. For me, I cannot choose between these two very special books. Perhaps Sweet will "pull a Klassen" and receive two phone calls from Chicago in January.