by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 27, 2010

"Spring rain floods the land... Springs rise in the swampy grass, and collect in wandering rivulets..."

It's a very simple book, but it makes the world of nature feel accessible. It was 1967 when Carol Carrick wrote the poetic children's picture book, "The Brook," and she describes all the events in nature which create a brook, and all the wild animals which benefit from it. Most pages hold only a single-sentence description, and sometimes that description flows onto a second page. ("With a roar the brook plunges in whitening rapids," Carrick writes - but turn the page, and the sentence is continuing. "...down broad steps, through a tunnel of trees...")

Carrick's husband Donald painted some wonderful watercolors, and his illustrations make the book feel abstract and open-ended. Each picture has only a few colors, but the patterns and shapes suggest the natural scenes described by the text. For example, Carol Carrick writes that the brook "bubbles down through a forest," and in Donald's drawing the brook is just a dark streak in the watercolor's background. But there's an impressive series of parallel tree trees, filling the page with a realistic repetition of the crooked brown pine trunks and the grey, wrinkly bark of the aspens.

Donald Carrick's paintings are in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Academy of Art, according to the book's jacket, and he brings the perfect tone to this book. Using a very basic color scheme, Donald Carrick creates an almost impressionistic set of glimpses at the natural world that the brook travels through. The text respectfully records the presence of various animals in the forest. ("The deer drink, raise their heads to listen, and leave tiptoe marks in the late drifts.")

Plot? There really isn't one. It's only real twist is that after the brook has turned into a river - cascading down between the trees - it attracts forest animals, which form an implicit wilderness community. ("Overhead the woodpecker hammers, and showers bright chips that bob on the ripples... Shadows of trout dart from dark caverns and drift over silvery gravel.") Yet somehow the book implies there's some mysterious connection between all the forces of nature - the ferns, the waterbirds, the deer, and the tree. At the end of the story, the brook still flows away from the familiar scenes in the forest - but even then, it's not alone. "Silently, shallow and slow, the brook slides into the pond.

"Together they flow to the sea."

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.