Mama, Is It Summer Yet?
“Mama, Is It Summer Yet?”, my son asked one sunny day in March.A book was my reply.
This book of papercut images illustrates the quiet signals that spring is giving way to summer. There is a hint of summer in a frosty morning, a promise in the swelling of a bud. For a child, summer is now part of the pattern of living. Each summer further establishes the pattern. This is life. Life holds winter. Life holds summer.
This book is also my reply to “Can we get strawberries?” one sunny day in March. Strawberries warmed by the sun, picked with bare toes hidden in the cool shade of the leaves happens when summer is here. That is when strawberries are eaten.
The rhythm of the seasons and the foods we feast on each season connect us to patterns millions of years old. The strawberries may be bigger now as we have coaxed the plants to bear heavy fruit, but the taste of sweet berry ripened by midsummer’s sun has always been the answer.
I worked on this book last spring, trying to time my images to what was unfolding around me. I would get ahead of the orbiting Earth and then have to wait for the apple tree to leaf out before I could begin again. The last few pictures were sketched with my son on my lap as we waited for the strawberries to ripen. He was the patient one.
I am working on my next book this spring. “To Market” is about the food we get from the farmer’s market every week. I visited the places and people who make my food possible. These are farmers with dirty hands and tattoos. It has been an exciting project to interview the resourceful people who make my food and I feel lucky to be able to roam around their fields, bakeries, and barns. Hopefully it will encourage families to explore the sources of their food and meet the people who grow their kale, smoke the salmon, cure the cheese. Once the processes are known, then it becomes possible to make cheese yourself and poke some kale seeds in the ground and see what happens! You will meet wonderful and interesting people as well: the makers and farmers of your sustenance. It has been a delicious exploration for me as I craft this next book.
