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Seeing the World Through a Poet’s Eyes …

h1 March 23rd, 2021 by jules


— From Fran Nuño’s The Dance of the Bees, illustrated by Zuzanna Celej


 


— From Mark Karlins’s Kiyoshi’s Walk, illustrated by Nicole Wong


 

I’m sending you to BookPage today, where I have a profile of two books that are love songs to haiku — Mark Karlins’s Kiyoshi’s Walk (Lee & Low, March 2021), illustrated by Nicole Wong, and Fran Nuño’s The Dance of the Bees (Cuento de Luz, February 2021), illustrated by Zuzanna Celej and translated from Spanish by Jon Brokenbrow.

That is here.

And below are some spreads from each book.

 

From Kiyoshi’s Walk:


 


“They kept walking. Kiyoshi noticed a flower growing out of a crack in the sidewalk.
A girl whooshed by on roller skates. At a sound, Kiyoshi and Eto looked up.”
(Click spread to enlarge)


 


“Eto wrote one more poem, his hand a shadow in the fading light:
Dark sky, clouded moon. / Back at home, his mother’s voice. / A tired boy dreams.
‘I know something else,’ Kiyoshi said. ‘Our feelings also make poems.'”
(Click spread to enlarge)


 


“The wind sighed through the leaves. A boat full of people floated past,
its lights glowing on the water. Eto touched Kiyoshi’s hand.
‘Now do you understand where poems come from?’ he asked.”
(Click spread to enlarge)


 


(Click cover to enlarge)


 

From The Dance of the Bees:


 


“My grandma loveed bees. She would spend hours and hours just watching them.
One summer, I went along with her on her walks through the countryside,
and she would tell me all about the amazing life of these beautiful insects.
That was when I discovered the dance of the bees.”
(Click image to enlarge and see spread in its entirety)


 


“Every morning, we would leave home and walk to a different place. Every day, I learned something new. ‘You must know that there are thousands of types of bees,’ said my grandma. ‘Thousands, Grandma?’ I said. ‘Yes, and some of them don’t even sting.'”
(Click image to enlarge and see spread in its entirety)


 


“One day, my grandma asked me a question I didn’t know how to answer. ‘Do you know why bees are so important for life on our planet?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why are they so important?’ ‘Because it’s thanks to them that all the fruit grows on the trees,’ she said. ‘Really? And how do they do it?’ I asked. I really wanted to know the answer.”
(Click image to enlarge and see spread in its entirety)


 


“We reached a little stream, sat down next to it,
and my grandma answered all my questions. …”
(Click image to enlarge and see spread and text in their entirety)


 


(Click cover to enlarge)


 

* * * * * * *

THE DANCE OF THE BEES. Text © 2020 Fran Nuño. Illustrations © 2020 Zuzanna Celej. © 2020 Cuento de Luz SL. Illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher, Cuento de Luz.

KIYOSHI’S WALK. Text copyright © 2021 by Mark Karlins. Illustrations copyright © 2021 by Nicole Wong and reproduced by permission of the publisher, Lee & Low Books, New York.





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