Follow Me

by Tricia Tusa

Overview

Swing high into the sky and explore a world full of earthy and elegant colors with the girl in this story as she experiences nature with a twist of her imagination. After she’s ventured far away, she floats gently back down and heads home, where her mother is waiting.
Tricia Tusa’s lyrical story and rich, sweeping art create a stylish swirl of charm and adventure, perfect for anyone who’s ever sat on a swing and daydreamed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547272016
Publisher:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date:	04/18/2011
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

TRICIA TUSA has written and illustrated many wonderful picture books, including In a Blue Room by Jim Averbeck; Mrs. Spitzer's Garden by Edith Pattou; The Magic Hat by Mem Fox, which was choosen as an IRA-CBC Children's Choice; and The End of the Beginning by Avi. She lives with her family in Galisteo, New Mexico.

Editorial Reviews

The girl who narrates this dreamy poem smiles all the way through it, and who wouldn't? She does what so many children fantasize about: after swinging back and forth on her swing, she launches herself up into the sky. Slowly, spread by spread, she tumbles through the air ("Look at me, follow me/ into the curl of a breeze./ I am caught/ in its folds—/ around and around and around"), free for a short while from the bonds of the earth ("I reach up,/ way out,/ over and beyond,/ across that easy sway of blue"), her physical floating a visual metaphor for the freedom of her thoughts. At last she lands softly in her backyard, her arms outstretched and eyes closed, the better to savor the last bit of flight. Falling leaves, birds, and flowers are united visually by Tusa's (In a Blue Room) nut-brown lines, which curl and twist with the girl. It's Tusa's portrait of the ideal childhood, liberated from the tyranny of schedules and achievement. Action-oriented kids may wonder why nothing happens; inward-turned imaginers will recognize themselves. Ages 4–8. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"A glorious visual meditation on light, color and home for even the smallest child and artist."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"It's Tusa's portrait of the ideal childhood, liberated from the tyranny of schedules and achievement....inward-turned imaginers will recognize themselves."—Publishers Weekly

"Like a swing on an autumn day, this gentle, contemplative title invites viewers to escape and soar."—Booklist

From the Publisher

A young girl on a swing invites us along on her poetic daydream or fantasy in colors. She swings from pink into blue, then rises and falls in purple and gray above the flowers. Then she takes off from the swing to get "...lost in small, green, happy music." She urges us into brown, white, yellow, "...into orange that slips into red," as she dives through the trees and leaves. Next she is caught and tossed in the folds of a "curl of a breeze." After going "above and beyond," she drifts back down, finding her way back home. The attractiveness of this poetic reverie is in Tusa's enthusiastic exploration of the heroine's surroundings. She rests in a flowerbed on the title page; then we find her pumping herself high on the swing before launching herself into the universe of colors. Tusa uses an etching process for her line with textured monoprinted color. The narrator's long braid and lanky limbs help carry our eyes over the double-page skies. Do not miss the end pages and the contrasting jacket and cover. Reviewer: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz

Children's Literature - Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz

PreS-Gr 2—A girl climbs onto a swing and starts to ride higher and higher until she launches into the sky. Airborne, she floats without fear "across that easy sway of blue" until she returns to Earth and twirls back home. Tusa's free-verse poem captures the child's exhilaration with soaring lyricism. "I wander through pink/and get lost in blue./I rise, I fall/in purple and gray." But it would be a mistake to think of this title as a book about colors. It is, instead, about the experience. The story is really told through the illustrations, done in the artist's familiar etched style with spindly lines and muted hues. The result is both energetic and peaceful. The face of the girl is drawn with only a few lines, but her expressions as she drifts through nature reflect the serene mood of the poem. This is a lovely addition to any picture-book collection and an interesting book to read in comparison with Leslie Patricelli's Higher! Higher! (Candlewick, 2009), also about a ride on a swing.—Donna Cardon, Provo City Library, UT

School Library Journal

This book starts with the cover, a picture of a small girl with a large braid getting onto a swing under a tree. On the endpapers, a swirl of greens and yellows are overlain with the vibrant line of petal, leaf and bud. "I wander through pink," says the girl on the first page, swinging high over pale roses and other blooms against a pastel sky, "and get lost in blue," she continues, swinging and smiling at the vast blue sky. She swings until, released in her imagination, she flies through the greenness of those endpapers and into a stand of trees, "Follow me, follow me / deep into brown, / into the bright white of yellow, / into orange / that slips into red, / all tumbled together." She is truly flying now, in an airy sea of leaves and birds, insects and seedpods. She returns to the swing, then to the ground to twirl and twirl into her own backyard. The beautiful etchings are rich in color and alive with vibrant line. All of what she sees—trees and sky, leaves and seeds, birds and flowers—are in her backyard, but she has transformed them with the power of her imagination as strongly as if she had sprinkled them with fairy dust. A glorious visual meditation on light, color and home for even the smallest child and artist. (Picture book. 4-9)

Kirkus Reviews