I am the Seed that Grew the Tree: A nature poem for every day of the year selected by Fiona Waters

Every now and then a book comes along that takes your breath away because it is so gorgeous, that makes you thrill to turn every page because every page is a delight, that makes you want to run outside and read an extract to everyone you meet.  Storylinks Mia Macrossan

When I saw I am the Seed that Grew the Tree (click this title for a surprise!) in a city bookstore several months ago I just knew I wanted my own copy but this is an expensive book (UK25 Pounds, AUS$50). Could I justify adding to my own collection and not to a school library? Luckily sitting on a bus last week I saw a wonderful sign - 20% of all books! I almost didn't dare hope they would have I am the Seed that Grew the Tree but YES they did.

I have mentioned this book briefly in a previous post. Yes it is true the seasons are wrong for an Australian audience but that is easy to cope with this. This is 333 pages of delight. The poems, there are 366 of them, are organised into months. On the pages between each month there is a table of contents listing the dates and poems for each day.  There are 366 poems because we need an extra one for a leap year. Some poems are only two or three lines long while others fill whole pages.

There are Australian poets in this book such as Judith Wright, Michael Dugan and Lilith Norman. Other famous names you will recognise are Allan Ahlberg, E.E Cummings, Walter de la Mare, Edward Lear, Robert Frost, Tony Mitton, William Carlos Williams and Jack Prelutsky. The three most prolific poets in this anthology are Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson and James Reeves. I would have enjoyed being a part of those editorial meetings when the poems were selected. I did spy a couple of my personal favourites - What is Green?; The red wheelbarrow; and If once you have slept on an Island.

Perhaps I should begin by sharing the poem for today (22nd October):

THE AUTUMN LEAVES
In Autumn
the trees wave in the wind
and the leaves come tumbling
down,
down,
down,
down.

Here they come,
hundreds and thousands of leaves
in yellow, red
hazel
gold
and
chocolate brown.

by Wes Magee

The design of this book is perfect.  There is a ribbon book mark, an index of poems, index of first lines and and index of poets.  You can see many of the glorious illustrations by Frann Preston-Gannon in this video from Nosy Crow.  My only real problem with this book is that I am desperate to SHARE it. I am not working in my school library this year but if I was I would post a poem to the staff each day. I have done this in the past but with this book selecting the poems would be so easy. One solution to this problem comes via this blog. You can expect to see a poem or two from this collection from time to time as I work my way through all 366 poems.  Take a look at this review.

Here are two more poems to brighten your day:

July 31st
THE FALLING STAR
I saw a star slide down the sky,
Blinding the north as it went by,
Too lovely to be bought or sold,
Too burning and too quick to hold,
Good only to make wishes on
And then forever to be gone.

by Sara Teasdale

2nd June
BUTTERFLIES
Butterflies;
Like pieces of torn paper
Strewn into the wind.

by N.C. Wickramasinghe