Caldecott Medal Contender: Out of Wonder

by Sam Juliano

Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets is a picture book, much as Paul B. Janeczko and Melissa Sweet’s Firefly July of a few years back also begged that categorization (seasonal theme rather than individual poets), where it was being touted as a strong contender for that year’s Caldecott Medal. I also feel that Out of Wonder is one of the most spectacularly beautiful picture books of this or any other year and that the extraordinarily gifted Ekua Holmes has eclipsed her superlative work for Voice of Freedom, a book of course that won her a well-deserved Caldecott Honor.  The subject matter of Voice called for somber tones, textures and colors, and a sustained earthiness that called attention to the difficult life of its noble protagonist. With this book, it seems clear that Holmes is equally adept at pictorially transcribing life’s more sublime themes, fully attuned to each of the magnificent poems she interprets. For utter color-swirling resplendence it is comparable to this year’s Muddy, but Holmes’ daunting task was to change course for every turn of the page, and what she has done here translates to a staggering achievement.

Out of Wonders celebrates the joy of the poetic form, featuring twenty seminal figures, from four different eras, gathering together in three parts, “Got Style?,” “In Your Shoes” and “Thank You.”  The poetry interpreters are Kwayme Alexander, Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth, who strive to capture the spirit, themes and feeling in some of the most venerated poets with the spectacular collage accompaniment by Holmes who beings astonishing diversity to this wide-reaching tribute.  From the 1200’s when the Persian Rumi (1207-1273) plied his craft through the 1600’s in Japan with Matsuo Basho up to the present day where the still living Mary Oliver, Naomi Shihab and Billy Collins are active the three exponents of the renowned free spirits chosen work to bring lyrical kinship within the most soulful of forms.

Alexander’s toast to Naomi Shihab Nye is a call for voice integration and that one word that will make it all fly. This is answered work-in-progress by Holmes with pencil and notepad paper wafting through the air.  Wentworth’s homage to Robert Frost combines the poet’s most renowned compositions which lovingly evoke Whose woods these are I think I know, his house is in the village though and  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both; Holmes complies with a hybrid winter scene incorporating the physicality of both.  Exquisite pink flower patterns bring the Cummings and Contemporary Haiku (celebrating Basho) tapestries to poetical intimacy and in the soulful snowflake canvas in tribute to Nikki Giovanni, titled “Snapshots” poetry is really the tangible images that float through one’s life, whether by way of nature’s caressing (“a snowflake on your tongue”); man-made reconfiguration (“A tattoo on the inside of your arm”) or bombastic expression (“shouting from the hills of Knoxville, Tennessee”).  But poetry, says Giovanni, as transcribed by Coulderley could be blues, jazz, cotton candy or a barbecue, in essence remembering the things that matter, the ones you love.  The colorful snowflake collage with the hooded protagonists taking in the flakes on their tongues is wholly sublime.  One of America’s crowning literary jewels, Langston Hughes is evoked ‘Round Midnight, as the family enjoy’s Mama’s waffles and Cordon Bleu in a precarious walk with impoverishment.  The “Jazz Jive Jam” canvas is a homespun musical epiphany, alongside beautiful stain-glass windows in the place of worship where “Deacon Willie prayed.”

I Like Your

The “In Your Shoes” chapter focuses in on the defining passions of their creators.  Basketball and Harlem are featured in Alexander’s homage to children’s literature icon Walter Dean Myers “and all the nurses, the poets, the workers, the hustlers (and color them my heroes), and Holmes responds with as powerful a patterned collage as any in the book. 2017 movie goers will certainly evoke Terence Davies’ magnificent Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion when gazing at Colderley’s “A Field of Roses”, though those with a particular appreciation for the red rose will applaud Holmes’s resplendent tableau.  In “The Blue Alphabet” creativity is spontaneous, even while waiting for the school bus in the manner of Terrance Hayes, (b. 1971), the youngest poet examined in the book.  Billy Collins poses that magic in our lives comes from the tiniest and seemingly most innocuous details.  The strikingly ornate oatmeal bowl amidst floral patterns possesses still life properties in gorgeous blue-green.  Holmes evokes pictorial images associated with the great Chilean poet Pablo Naruda in the forest/sea shore tapestry coinciding with “The Music of the Earth.”  In the Judith Wright tribute “Tambourine Things” from Colderley, Holmes evokes ancient silence and the elders in a brown and yellow canvas meant to pictorially reference this longtime champion of Aboriginal rights.  The beloved American contemporary poet Mary Oliver is honored in Wentworth’s “(Loving) The World and Everything In It,” and Holmes sees it as a pose of reverence and nature immersion is an buoyant a tapestry as any seen in Out of Wonder. 

A Field Of Roses

Holmes saves her most spectacular art for the final section, “Thank You”, which is also remarkable for the diversity of style employed.  The sequined gown worn by Gwendolyn Brooks, the Bronxville blues singer in “Hue and Cry” as she double dips on the piano and with vocals is exquisite in an arresting collage showing brassy accompaniment during a late night gig.  Their is more introspection in the work of Sandra Cisneros, the Chicago-born novelist, poet and short story writer, who often incorporated Spanish words in her work.  The Mango Street of her signature novel is evoked in kaleidoscopic design and silhouette in “The Poet Inside Me.”  The hectic life of a doctor poet, William Carlos Williams is envisioned in a maze of shapes, meant to depict house calls where time plays a vital role.  The “Song of Uhuru”, celebrating Okot p’Bitek inspires stunning African art in the tradition of Leo and Diane Dillon.  The leafy forest collage honoring the Oscar nominated actor Chief Dan George, also a prominent poet and defended of Native American rights, brings nature in its most resplendent hues to one of Out of Wonder’s loveliest tapestries.  Rumi’s “Spinning a Song” where music reigns supreme is the magnificent aforementioned cover design and the rainbow confection for “Majestic” in tribute to Maya Angelou is pure phantasmagorical watercolor bliss connected to self-confidence and personal triumph.

There are few books released in 2017 that showcase the kind of diverse and ravishing art on display in Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets.  That it should be one of the very last books in the narrowed down short pile seems like a no-brainer.  Holmes may well be awarded her second Caldecott in whatever capacity, and few could argue its worthiness. Out of Wonder is beauty incarnate.

Acclaimed illustrator and past Caldecott Honor winner Ekua Holmes.

Note:  This is the thirty-ninth entry in the 2017 Caldecott Medal Contender series.  The annual venture does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running.  In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration.  It is anticipated the series will include in the neighborhood of around 30 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender.  Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end.  The awards will be announced in mid-February, hence the reviews will continue until around the end of January or through the first week of February.

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