"Good golden sun,
does your belly ever ache?
All the world is
filled with sweetness.
Would you like a little taste?
Good golden sun,
tell me, how'd you get so big?"
The shadowed darkness of the opening endpaper hints at the sun's rise. Turn to the title page and a flower bud responds to the sun's light. The flower opens, the shadows begin to fade, and the sun pokes higher in the sky. A narrative voice welcomes the sunlight, asking where it has been. The text continues in a series of questions concerning every day events happening on earth.
As a bee takes flight from darkness to light, it lands on the opened flower, taking its collected pollen back to the beehive where it is met by other bee friends. The narrator wonders if the sun is lonely on its own in the sky. From flower to bee, from bee to hive, from the hive's honey to bear, its role is important in the earth's life. It doesn't stop at the bear. That bear is bitten by a mosquito that flies away to be eaten by a bird. The bird drops an egg just in time for a mouse's meal. So it goes, from morning till night, with the sun providing the energy and warmth needed at every moment along the way.
The cut paper, watercolor, acrylic, colored pencil and crayon artwork is digitally created, and stunning. The sun's path is a constant as it bathes each and every creature it encounters in a warm glow that is sure to delight readers. Brilliantly detailed art, as we have come to expect from Mr. Wenzel, fills each spread with a glow as the sun moves across the sky.
"Good golden sun,
there is nothing more to ask.
Every day's the same -
you stay silent as you pass."
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