Wild Wild Sunflower Child Anna

Wild Wild Sunflower Child Anna is a wonderful book and completely underated. Written by Nancy White Carlstrom (of Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? fame), Wild Wild Sunflower Child Anna is a gorgeous rhyming book. It begins:

Running and jumping
silly and loud
is Anna
in the morning.
Wild wild sunflower child
Anna.

Beautiful! It used to make me cry when I read it to my daughter. (My son is less enamored of this book, I have to admit.) My favorite lines are:

Lifting up the pressing stone
beetles rushing giddy.
Spiders spinning silent webs
around the silver winking.
Silent spinning
buzzing, blinking
breathing rainbows Anna.

Gorgeous. And, it scans!

Lack of attention to meter in children's books is a pet peeve of mine. In fact, when reading Carlson's equally good Jesse Bear aloud I need to add an extra "jesse bear" to each line to make the meter work.

Read Wild Wild Sunflower Child Anna aloud to a child today!