Summertime Waltz

By Nina Payne

Swiatkowska's finely wrought oil paintings, beguiling and dreamlike in their detail, give a free-spirited interpretation of Payne's poem. Together, words and pictures evoke the lush scents, sounds, and feel of the lingering days of summer. Full color.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374372918
• ISBN13: 9780374372910
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Length: 32 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 0.5" x 9.8"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

Gorgeous, inspiring introduction to surreal poetry and images

My 13 month old brings this to me again and again for no logical reason--the illustrations are a two-dimentional multimedia revery that recalls Edward Gorey and your edgiest graphic designer. Hardly the sort of thing, as other reviewers note, that most children are exposed to. Maybe therein lies the attraction--it's so different from everything else we read children. The poem itself is better read, I feel, on the first page where you can see it in its entirety, than on the leisurely rolling spreads throughout the book. But there's something that captivates me and my child in these pages...the rhythm, the cadenced and luxurious visual assault, the 'Alice in Wonderland meets Monty Python reading Poe and eating Cherry Garcia' feel of it all. Anyway, it's the only book my toddler will ask to read 8-9 times in a row before willingly moving on to something else. A beautiful book for grownups, a nuanced introduction to poetry for children, and a surreal way to spend half an hour, lost in the details that are found in the doorway.

Summertime and the living is easy

Not all children's books are automatically added to library collections simply because they exist. There is a certain kind of vetting that takes place. Librarians with years of experience sit around and discuss whether or not a title should be purchased for one branch, for many branches, or for none at all. A book will not be purchased in bulk, in my experience, for the following reasons: 1. It is badly written. 2. It is badly illustrated. 3. It is too high-end for the kiddie set. In the case of number three, only a single copy will be purchased for an entire library system serving countless civilians. Such is the fate of the lovely "Summertime Waltz". What we have here is a nice little poem and a series of dreamlike images that create a beautiful book when combined. It is not, however, going to interest your five-year-old. If you would like to purchase a picture book for yourself, I can think of none better. Want to get something for your kids? Look elsewhere, m'dears. The book consists of a single poem. On the first two-page spread we get a glimpse of what is to come. First of all, there is the dedication. As a reviewer, I think a book's dedication is every bit as important as the story that comes afterwards. With the blue horizon below we read this: "To you - N.P. and G.S.". This is where they stand on the issue. You can judge whether or not the sentiment is sincere soon enough. On the opposite page is the poem. Three stanzas, twenty-four lines, and three paragraphs. Read through it once yourself and you see that though it starts out straightforward (aside from the occasional suggestion that you smell "the water on pots of geraniums") it takes a trip to dreamland soon thereafter. Early lines like "Dinner is over" are one-upped by thoughts like "Outside and inside is lost at the door". Just to the lower right of the poem is the image of a featureless black dog inclined towards what looks to be a piggish rhino's rear. Its back is covered with tiny capering silhouetted monkeys. Got all that? Good, cause that's just the first two pages. Turn another and the poem begins in earnest. Each line is taken by artist Gabi Swiatkowska and pushed to its obvious limits. It's a dream, it's a comment, it's a memory. It's beautiful is what it is. It's "Summertime Waltz". Now I first became seriously interested in checking out this book when I read an article in "School Library Journal" (I believe it was the January 2005 issue, but don't quote me on that) on artist Gabi Swiatkowska. If you've ever had the pleasure of sitting down and reading, "My Name Is Yoon" by Helen Recorvits then you understand how talented Ms. Swiatkowska is. The article in SLJ was fawning. An artist could hardly hope for a sweeter ode to their own work than the one popping up between SLJ's sticky pages. So "Summertime Waltz" seemed right up my alley. I'm a big fan of dreamlike picture books, and I'm especially a fan of talented surreal artists. I wa

Richie's Picks: SUMMERTIME WALTZ

"Lovely the lateness in summertime darkening. Dinner is over. The grownups are talking. Smell of the water on pots of geraniums. Lovely the lateness in summertime dark." What I remember is how quiet it got once you started counting and everyone had stealthily moved more than the first dozen steps in the direction of their respective hiding places. In between calling out numbers, as you leaned your closed eyes against your arms against the telephone pole, you could smell the light scent of the creosote in the pole and feel the vibration of the wires humming above, the cool grass between your toes below. "Outside and inside is lost in the doorways ...forty-nine, ready or not, here I come! Moths and mosquitoes are biting the lampposts. Outside and inside is lost at the door." Back in the late 50s and early 60s, before the Beatles, back when the lightning bugs would appear in giant clouds at dusk, I lived on Sunrise Street, the first home my parents owned. At the time I didn't understand what my granddad Rex meant when he chuckled and said that we lived in "Fertile Valley," but there were that many kids living along that little piece of Plainview with whom to grow up. Once every summer there was a day and a night when they roped off the street for a neighborhood block party. On other days we'd draw chalk mazes in the street to ride our bikes around. There were a trio of older girls who'd often want to organize us younger kids. Once they spent a week making us rehearse for a show in the garage next store. (I remember having to learn the chorus to "Kissing and A-Hugging With Fred.") Those same girls were pitching and catching a Spalding pinkie the first time I ever swung a baseball bat. "No one is leaving, then everyone's running to look for the ball as it rolls into morning. Millicent Tomkins! Your mother is calling. No one is leaving, then everyone's gone." When I was asked to come "talk about books I like" with a mixed-age group of kids at a writing camp this week, SUMMERTIME LULLABY was one of my immediate choices for all ages. This book has been tugging at me for months! I still don't speak art very well, but Gabi Swiatkowska's two-page paintings are each a story within themselves, accompanied by two lines of the poem dancing and spinning their way across the pages. Like the memory of popping one of those little asphalt bubbles that would rise in the ninty-plus-degree sunshine in the middle of Sunrise Street, the timeless rhythm and magical pictures of SUMMERTIME LULLABY have sunk into my brain.