If the flight of a hawk is poetry in motion, then this book is, too. Author Maria Gianferrari provides the poetry, and illustrator Brian Floca provides the hawk in motion. Parallel stories are at work here: Father Hawk hunts, while Mother Hawk stays with their chicks; a human girl, binoculars in hand, observes the hawk, her more hesitant younger sister in the background. (I like that the girls’ parents are not part of the story; there are no enthusiastic parents telling the girls what a wonderful experience they just had or taking pictures of the special moment.)

Floca, a master of ink-and-watercolor illustrations, won the Caldecott medal in 2014 for Locomotive, and this latest effort puts him in the hunt again. Just look at the cover illustration. This is no cutesy Disney character. This is a wild animal. Father Hawk hunts and feeds a squirrel to his family, and you can see the distress in the younger girl’s face at seeing the hawk flying off with the squirrel in its talons. Look at the multi-page sequence of the hawk, when after a long day of hunting he has finally spotted the squirrel. On the double-page spread showing the squirrel running for its life, the text reads, “He parachutes. / Legs tipping, / talons gripping…” Such an effective juxtaposition of words and illustration, of bird and prey. The following spread ("... and grabbing") will have readers gasping at Floca’s depiction of winner and loser in nature’s drama. There is no evil intent in the hawk’s fierce expression; evil intent is a human construction. Here, an animal does what animals do, unsettling as it will be to readers, as it is to the younger sister.

Floca effectively alternates his use of dramatic double-page spreads with cozier spot art. The spreads are for action; the spot art depicts the sunbathing hawk, a chipmunk in the grass, and at the end, both families back in their respective nests. Floca weaves themes of nature and family and the feeling of solitude into the story. As Floca discussed in his conversation with Julie Danielson at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, he wanted to capture the solitary feeling of both the hawk and the girls on the porch. They observe each other (I assume the hawk has seen the girls out there), but their worlds are worlds apart. Floca said, “There’s something solitary about a hawk, and I liked the idea of there being something solitary and private in watching one, too.”

Surely the committee will be eager to discuss the merits of this volume, which meets all of the criteria for making it “a distinguished American picture book for children.” I see it as particularly distinguished in artistic technique, “appropriateness of style of illustration to the story, theme or concept,” and “excellence of presentation in recognition of a child audience.”

Illustrations and text work powerfully together. Gianferrari’s second-person narrative is  driven by action verbs. The hawk “rides the wind / like a wave, / twisting and turning, / kiting and floating.” “Crows charge / and chase, / darting and / diving, / driving Father Hawk from their roost.” Even the fonts vary to match the action. When the hawk dives after a chipmunk, “He dives, / feet first, / wings arced:

                                   fast

                                       to

                                       the

                                        grass.”

The spare text, too, is appropriate, never over-explaining but just emphasizing scene and action. The text might overreach a bit in trying for poetic effect — with "Mars rises red in the sky” opening and closing the story, sunbeams scratching the sky, and dandelions rippling and oaks trembling — but I doubt these quibbles make the book “less effective,” according to the Caldecott criteria. If anything, it’s a text that fully complements the power of the illustrations.

Hawk Rising reminds me of last year’s Medal winner, Wolf in the Snow, in the juxtaposition of human and animal worlds. In Cordell’s story, there is some interaction between human and animal; there is that same sense of otherness, of solitary and separate worlds. Cordell used circles around the girl and the wolf to emphasize this; here, Floca uses spot art. (If you look at the early pages when the girl leaves her house and the text reads, “You noticing,” the circular spot art on the opposite page depicting the hawk and a chipmunk — the animal world — is similar to Cordell’s circles.)

Maybe Hawk Rising will rise to the top this year and grab a Medal or Honor in its talons!