THE SONG

The difference pictures of a certain kind make to a text is graphically demonstrated here. Accompanying the song of a little bird "inside" Sarah—through summer, fall, and winter, and into the next spring—are not moody evocations but poster-like crystallizations, in the nursery-mode of the late-Twenties/early-Thirties, but with reflections of a latter-day sensibility in the space-filling composition and (sometimes) stagey design. The merest snatch of text brings an emblematic, frame-able picture—as when we see, with "The little bird sang all winter," a fat rabbit hunched down in the snow, and two smaller rabbits snuggled in an underground nest. Meanwhile, just winging into sight, is the little bird—who somehow turns up in picture after picture, even as his song is always inside Sarah's head. What he is singing is a song of the seasons—"of snowflakes and frosty windows and the sting of the wind"; "of silky new grass and the smell of wet earth"—which Sarah's parents can't hear; and then, in the spring, she meets a friend who hears the song too. With the strongly realized pictures, the melodious text becomes, indeed, a sort of background melody—which is one perfectly valid way for youngsters to take in a picture book. It's a safe bet, too, that they'll remember Tufari's decorative patterns and embellishments as what the song was all about.