On a Gold-Blooming Day: Finding Fall Treasures by Buffy Silverman

 

On a Gold-Blooming Day: Finding Fall Treasures

by Buffy Silverman

Millbrook Press/Lerner, 2022, 32 pages

Autumn is the season that always tricks me and I always fall for it. It's such a beautiful season, the colors are glorious and I just love the smell of fall in the air. I always forget that winter is close behind autumn and winter is not a favorite. So what I love about this book is that now I enjoy autumn anytime I want, at least in words and pictures (although, if the trees in NYC ever change color, I'm taking my young readers leaf peeping and maybe I'll stick a few in this book for the smell of it). What makes this book so special?

Spectacular photographs are paired with clever short noun-verb rhyming phrases that perfectly capture nature celebrating autumn:

The book is actually divided into sections representing all the different fall treasure to be found. On a gold-blooming day focuses on snakes, insects and seeds: "snakes glide/ Spiders hide/ Crickets chirp/ Butterflies slurp."

On a nut-crunching day, readers explore the forest with its busy animals and where "Mushrooms pop./ Acorns drop./ Fawns graze./ Sumacs blaze." 

Fish, amphibians, birds, otters and muskrats are the main focus of the next section that begins with the words "On a frog-leaping,/ log-sleeping,/ goose-honking day..." And finally, "On an apple-picking, / seed-sticking,/ autumn-colored day..." a family of four is seen in an apple orchard, while

and of course, who could resist the call of a leaf pile: 

Aside from the jolly rhyme and the wonderful full color photographs that perfectly compliment each other, there is also informative back matter called What treasures will you find in fall? and that gives explanations and suggestions for each one of the noun-verb rhymes: 

as well as a list of book for Further Reading and a Glossary of words that may be unfamiliar to young readers.

I loved that energetic rhyme of this book. And it is the perfect format for young kids to really get into. I love sharing poetry with my young readers and it always pleases me to see how receptive they are to it. They loved this book and we spend a lot of time exploring the photographs and taking about each one. Then we tried making up two word noun-verb combinations to see if we could come up with a few more ideas to welcome autumn. 

On a Gold-Blooming Day is definitely a book that we will keep on our library shelf so we can return to it again and again.