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Since I mention Katherine Paterson<\/a><\/strong>, the reigning National Ambassador for Young People\u2019s Literature<\/a><\/strong>, below in my kicks, it’s only fitting that I share some spreads today from her picture book adaptation of Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures<\/em>, illustrated by Pamela Dalton<\/a><\/strong>. In Brother Sun, Sister Moon<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, released in March from Chronicle’s Handprint Books, Paterson reimagines the nearly 800-year-old hymn of praise from Saint Francis, originally written in the Umbrian dialect of Italian and also known as the Canticle of the Sun<\/em>, which celebrates life — everything from Brother Sun to Sister Moon and “all our Sister Stars who clothe the night” to even the courage given us “in this world of hatred and war.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “How do you ‘reimagine’ the words of the most beloved saint in the history of Christendom?” Paterson writes in a closing author’s note. “If I hadn’t been so taken with the samples I saw of Pamela Dalton’s art, I don’t think I’d have tried.” This has been a much-talked-about picture book for a while now, in large part due to the illustrations from this debut picture book artist. Well before its official release, there was buzz about Dalton’s beautiful intricate paper cuts. She uses the craft of Schereschnitte, which means simply “scissor cutting” in German, a method which was popular in early 19th-century Pennsylvania German communities. It involves paper-folding (lots), a heavy use of symmetry, and many craft knife blades. As I understand it, after cutting pieces for this book, Pamela laid her paper on large pieces of glass and completely covered them in coffee, which softens the contours and the watercolors she’s painted on the papercuts. The pieces are then ironed many times to smooth out wrinkles and paper-buckling. <\/p>\n The publisher says some of the pieces in this book took as many as 100 hours to design, draw, cut, stain and paint. Whew. <\/p>\n As for Paterson’s reimagining, I know little to nothing about this song of praise, but there is a translation by Bill Barrett<\/a><\/strong> at the book’s close. As the Publishers Weekly<\/em> review of this one notes, Paterson “does a fine job of making the canticle more catholic than Catholic (no mention of mortal sin), while maintaining a traditional tone and hewing to the structure of the original.” I can’t help but notice that at the end she also makes a nod to womankind with “O Lord, the Father and Mother<\/em> of all creation.” {Emphasis mine.} This is good. <\/p>\n The same review adds, “Young Germanic peasants work and play, harvesting, baking, and, in a solemn spread dedicated to Sister Death, mourning a deceased woodland animal. It’s only the absence of a more multicultural cast that keeps this from being a truly global paean to God’s creation.” These are cherubic-looking young children. Think Kate Greenaway-esque<\/a><\/strong>, but peasants. But the good thing about sharing art at 7-Imp is that I can let the art speak for itself, so I shall — with a few more spreads below from the book. The papercuts really are exquisite. Enjoy. (These spreads seem a bit blurry—and for that I apologize—but you can at least get the general idea of the papercuts here.)<\/p>\n BROTHER SUN, SISTER MOON: SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI’S CANTICLE OF THE CREATURES. Text copyright \u00a9 2011 by Katherine Paterson. Illustrations \u00a9 2011 by Pamela Dalton. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Handprint Books, an imprint of Chronicle Books, San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n Note for any new readers: 7-Imp’s 7 Kicks is a weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you. <\/p>\n 1)<\/strong><\/font> Best kick of all: What Jack Gantos said Friday<\/a><\/strong> about reading slowly was really and truly and madly wonderful, and I high-five the air again. Here’s what he wrote:<\/p>\n As for being a \u201cBluebird\u201d reader when I was a child\u2014which was the slow reading group\u2014all I have to say is that I have not been underserved by being a slow reader, because the result of being slow is that I fully consume a book when I read it. I poke my head in the white space between the words, and in the horizontal space between the lines, and sniff all along the margins like a dog taking a walk. I love taking the time for the book to cook in my imagination. I feel in no rush to blast through a book, because how then could you possibly fully imagine every little fantastic detail which is taking place in a novel. Yes, everyone loves riding the plot line, but the true imaginative marrow of a book is found off the plot\u2014for instance, when you read the description of a wicked character standing in a kitchen and how that character breathes and carves up a fist of cheese with a knife and swallows without chewing and moves his eyes in a mean way as he tears bread apart with small hands and thinks of someone he loathes\u2013it is important to fully see this unfold in your mind as well as the thousands of other off-plot details which make up a true book\u2014and by \u2018true book\u2019 I mean the book that you create in your own mind, the book that you keep in your mind long after you have finished running your eyes over the printed text. It is the imaginative imprint on the paper in your own mind that is the truth of that book to the reader. So if you read too fast and rush through the book like a trained monkey, you may be able to answer a few questions on a test\u2014but that is not the same as being captured for life by the pleasure of a good book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 1\u00bd)<\/strong><\/font> My five-year-old makes a passionate, impromptu, and very lengthy song out of everything<\/em>. She’s doing it as I type this. One of her lyrics for one particular recent ditty was “don’t kung-fu me down,” and I think “don’t kung-fu yourself down” is going to become my new bit of advice for friends in Low Self-Esteem Moments. <\/p>\n 2)<\/strong><\/font> A new song from Blitzen Trapper<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/bssmcover.JPG\")
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and forever more.”<\/em>
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