Slow Down, by author Rachel Williams and illustrator Freya Hartas, is a lovely book that uses single moments in nature to remind us to pay attention to the small moments of the world around us.
From the moment a bee pollinates a flower, to a Kingfisher diving to get a fish, to a squirrel burying an acorn, to a fox reaching for berries on a bush, to a spidering spinning a web – each page in this oversized picture book is a glorious ode to animals and insects and plants and life. Hartas’ drawing are just beautiful in their muted coloring and Williams text brings you into the moment, first with some background and then step by step.
The subtitle of the book (50 Mindful Moments in Nature) shows the intent here — of slowing down to notice things — and the audience is both adults and children, and I can see Slow Down being used as read-aloud in younger grade classrooms. I spent quiet reading time perusing it, and appreciated that whatever page I landed on, I not only learned something but also paid attention.
Peace (from the outside in),
Kevin
Been dipping into “Leaves of Grass” of late and asking myself what poetic future Whitman was calling us to allow to change? I know that is oddly worded, but prophets like Whitman, and, cmon he was one, are demanding we move sublimely toward a new world and a new story. I think what emerges from is the call to do this: Observe and Sing! That is essentially what you are calling for here with this book. It is a heavy ask as our brain’s very nature is to make everything routine and undemanding. Observe and Sing!
Anti-spami-single celled creaturish: amoeba, eh. Two euglenas walk into a bar. One says to the other as they call to the bartender, “Boy howdy do amoeba drink badly.” And the other remarks, “Amoeba one, too.”