A Woodland Indian child travels by canoe and on foot with a parent to an island campsite. During a day and a night, autumn becomes winter. Details of the familiar transition seem new within a wondrous, sophisticated account distinctive in design and voice. First, a lengthy poetic commentary on creation: "before seeing, before being / before valentines and wild flowers... snow was born" and then - a unique naturalistic first person narrative. Neither uses conventional punctuation. "The blanket of leaves that yesterday / covered the earth / was now covered with a blanket / of snow / to keep her warm during her long winter sleep / My blanket was also covered in snow / I brushed the snow away / Gone were the colors of yesterday / I arose from the earth / and walked into the light / of a new season." Stunning full-color collage assemblages sometimes fill double-page spreads and at other times decorate one corner of a full page of text. Illuminated letters and images of falling leaves assist in expressing the delicate instant when the season changes. (Age 10 and older)

Last Leaf First Snowflake to Fall takes us on a dreamlike voyage into nature at that secret moment when fall turns into winter. We find ourselves in a kind of paradise, which humans may be part of but which they have not despoiled.

A father and son lead us through forests, down rivers, over lakes and ponds. Along the way we experience the primordial beauty of the physical world. This is nature as we all feel in our hearts it must once have been.

Through lyrical words and a masterful collage technique, Leo Yerxa has created an exquisite and poetic evocation of this moment.