Emile and the Field

K-Gr 3–Brown-skinned, short-haired Emile and his little black dog glory play in a wide field full of flowers and bees. Emile inspects a grasshopper among some daffodils, follows a bee, and hugs a maple tree beginning to drop its multicolored leaves—but he isn’t so sure about winter, when the field is covered in snow and other children come to sled and play. His father explains that “if we share…and learn to take care…” the field will remain for all to enjoy. Emile, in a red winter coat, then makes a snow angel, recalling Peter in Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day. Ebinama’s lovely, delicate watercolor-and-ink illustrations show the field in different seasons and times of day, and a spectacular night sky with fireflies, moon, and stars, making full use of the spectrum a landscape provides. There is a lyricism to the text, though it doesn’t adhere to a rhyme scheme; together, story and pictures are an old-fashioned celebration of nature.