Favorite picture book of the week: the nostalgia edition

This week we have been segueing our displays from graduation, Memorial Day, and spring to Father's Day and, most enticingly, summer books! While there are many gorgeous summer and beach trip books (Suzy Lee's Wave, Susan Elya's Bebe Goes to the Beach, are in the forefront of my mind), my favorite seasonal book hands down is Charlotte Zolotow's When The Wind Stops (second place, if you are curious, is Red Sings from Tree Tops, by Joyce Sidman).

Originally published in 1969 and reprinted in a revised format in 1995, When The Wind Stops is a lush description of life's continual circle. Posed through a boy's repeated questions and a mother's answers, this story demonstrates how nothing ends, it simply changes or makes way for something else to begin. It uses more common changes, from the day turning to night and winter turning to spring, to the more abstract, like a mountain sloping into a valley, rain after a storm, and the eponymous end of the wind. More than a concept book or an explanation, this is pure life celebration.


For similar conceptual, seasonal, or simply beautiful books, try Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer, Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aadema, or The Fall of Freddie the Leaf by Leo Buscaglia.