CARTWHEEL TO THE MOON

A beautiful memoir of the poet’s childhood in Sicily is conveyed in richly evocative verse. There is nothing simple about these poems arranged by season, but their language is limpid and radiant. In spring, the boy narrator says his grandmother told him, “The sun has a tail / that reaches under the earth / and tickles seeds.” The moon rests on the treetops “like a loose sunflower.” The boy and his mother make pipes out of splitting a stem and placing a rosebud upright in the cleft. The longest poem is a gorgeous summer compilation of memories of his father, who died when di Pasquale was small: riding the carousel with the boy, bringing his mother flowers even as they now bring flowers to his grave. His tenderness frees the memories of sorrow. Sicilian landscape and custom fit as naturally into the poetry as the stones and the sea—young readers will find that landscape reflected in Thompson’s black-and-white images, the pages nicely balanced between text and illustration. (Poetry. 7-12)