Cricket Song.
By : Anne Hunter
Publisher : HMH Books For Young Readers. ( March 2016)
An enchanting bedtime tale which illuminates the magnificence of a wilderness in the night! Anna Hunter`s brush strokes dive into the beauties of a wonderful summer`s night through hooting owls, dreaming otters, croaking frogs and chirping crickets. They swim across continents, carrying cool evening breezes mingled with natural melodies.
The illustrious night music she has created in this book introduces children to the mysteries of nature around them; while entertaining the theme we all " breath the same air ", she connects two sleeping children from two different parts of the world through the wind blowing across the seas. Chirping of crickets and croaking of frogs are the lullabies of children falling asleep in villages around the world. Added to this, could be the squawking of parakeets in a tropical village, but the song of the cricket can be heard everywhere in the countryside. As it is mentioned through her lyrical text " As the sun sails west / Bringing the night / the evening breeze rises to meet it. / The breeze carries the song of crickets into your room" - depicting a sleeping boy. The book ends with an image of a sleeping girl in a far away village across the sea, " Who dozes like you / to the song of crickets..."
Her illustrations, done with water colours and patterned in delicate ink, tells us the story all by itself . The image of floating, sleepy sea otters, being rocked by tiny waves and dozing to the whale music whilst the fish do their jigs, the sleepy rabbit family in a burrow, and the sleeping children, altogether offer a wonderful sense of serenity.
Each spread is completed with two panels of illustrations, one large and one small. The small panel at the bottom always depicts two villages - separated by the sea - one a seaside village on a meadow-land in the west, and the other a tropical fishing village. Children will no doubt be enthralled by this poetic adventure while learning a bit about nocturnal animal life as well as that the world is not so far apart!
