Weaving the Rainbow
George Ella Lyon, Stephanie AndersonBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
How do you make a rainbow?
If you are a weaver you can make a rainbow with wool.
If you are a sheep you can BE a rainbow.
Here's how.
An artist raises sheep, shears them, cards and spins the wool, dyes it, and then weaves a colorful picture of the Kentucky pasture where her lambs were born.
Synopsis
How do you make a rainbow?
If you are a weaver you can make a rainbow with wool.
If you are a sheep you can BE a rainbow.
Here's how.
Publishers Weekly
Limpid verse and luminous watercolors form the warp and weft of this beautifully crafted book. Lyon (Come a Tide) follows wool from sheep to loom, tracing the birth of a tapestry. In her first picture book, Anderson's (Witch-Hunt) sharp-edged yet airy illustrations show a weaver and her flock of white sheep, whom Lyon calls, mysteriously, "rainbow sheep." For their first year, Lyon concedes in graceful free verse, they were white. "But," she says, against a spread of sheep gazing toward the setting sun, "they were getting closer to the rainbow." This portentous phrase is left to resonate while Lyon describes the shearing, then the fleece itself: "White and springy this fleece,/ but carrying it from the pasture/ the weaver sees rainbows." (Anderson handles the task of rendering shapeless bunches of wool in watercolor with remarkable proficiency.) As the weaver gathers plants and as the artwork depicts her hands preparing to drop the plants into steaming vats, readers realize the rainbow will appear when the wool is dyed; a magnificent spread shows the drying skeins hanging among blossoming apples trees. The weaver warps her loom and begins to weave-and the subject of the tapestry turns out to be ewes and lambs in a colorful pasture. "White sheep in rainbow pastures./ In rainbow pastures she weaves white sheep": the palindrome form of the last two lines mimics the shuttle's back-and-forth motion; so does the poem, as it moves from sheep to yarn, and back to sheep. Ages 3-6. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Limpid verse and luminous watercolors form the warp and weft of this beautifully crafted book. Lyon (Come a Tide) follows wool from sheep to loom, tracing the birth of a tapestry. In her first picture book, Anderson's (Witch-Hunt) sharp-edged yet airy illustrations show a weaver and her flock of white sheep, whom Lyon calls, mysteriously, "rainbow sheep." For their first year, Lyon concedes in graceful free verse, they were white. "But," she says, against a spread of sheep gazing toward the setting sun, "they were getting closer to the rainbow." This portentous phrase is left to resonate while Lyon describes the shearing, then the fleece itself: "White and springy this fleece,/ but carrying it from the pasture/ the weaver sees rainbows." (Anderson handles the task of rendering shapeless bunches of wool in watercolor with remarkable proficiency.) As the weaver gathers plants and as the artwork depicts her hands preparing to drop the plants into steaming vats, readers realize the rainbow will appear when the wool is dyed; a magnificent spread shows the drying skeins hanging among blossoming apples trees. The weaver warps her loom and begins to weave-and the subject of the tapestry turns out to be ewes and lambs in a colorful pasture. "White sheep in rainbow pastures./ In rainbow pastures she weaves white sheep": the palindrome form of the last two lines mimics the shuttle's back-and-forth motion; so does the poem, as it moves from sheep to yarn, and back to sheep. Ages 3-6. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.Children's Literature
Lyon makes the process of weaving into a mystical, magical experience. In the spring, gazing at her pasture, the weaver sees "rainbow sheep." Born as white lambs the year before, washed clean and white, they have won first prize at the July state fair. All winter their fleece has thickened. Now it is shearing time. The weaver cleans and spins the wool into yarn. Making her colors from natural plants, she dyes it, preparing to weave a picture on her loom, just as a painter paints one. Then she adds finger-woven sheep to the rainbow pasture on the loom. Double page scenes, starting on the end-papers, record the pale green, misty pastures; in two page turns, the sheep merge into the weaving. These are naturalistic watercolors with soft, huggable ewes and lambs. Each step of shearing, cleaning and weaving is shown clearly, up until the scene showing the woven sheep being integrated into the finished picture. The respect and affection for the sheep, the weaver and her craft are clearly depicted as well. 2004, Richard Jackson/Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division, Ages 4 to 8.—Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz