BLESS US ALL

Rylant pairs a series of indoor and outdoor scenes, each framed in a border of patchwork squares and painted with bright, opaque, broadly brushed colors, with a rhymed month-by-month catalog of blessings that will challenge even the hardiest sweet tooth, e.g., for June: “Bless the flowers,/bless the bees,/bless the birds/above the trees,/Bless the bunnies,/kitties too,/Bless each day,/all warm and blue.” The pictures are more sanguine and less sentimental; not only are the naively drawn human and animal figures naturally and expressively posed, but the book’s overall visual unity is maintained, despite a changing color scheme from spread to spread. Very young children will find soothing rhythms in both pictures and text, but this is more of an artistic achievement than a literary one. (Picture book. 1-5)