Some people text, some e-mail, but there's almost nothing better than getting an actual letter in the mail, especially if it's a letter poem.
"A letter poem is when you're addressing someone else," explains poet Joyce Sidman. "The way I write them, you're starting out saying, 'This is why I'm writing to you. This is why I'm intrigued by you. And these are the things I want to know about you.'"
In the title poem of Sidman's new children's book, Dear Acorn, (Love, Oak), an oak tree writes a letter poem to an acorn: "I feel you there. A tickle at my twig tips. A plump promise against my rough bark."
"I'll stretch my arms strong and true," the acorn writes back, "I'll be your friend, the one who rises up beside you."
A letter poem is "a poem to connect with someone else," Sidman says, "but it doesn't have to be a person."
In Dear Acorn, (Love, Oak), pen pal pairs include: a pebble and a river, a button and a coat, the ocean and baby sea turtles, a bubble and the sky.
Joyce Sidman says she got the idea for the book about 20 years ago, when she picked up an acorn in the forest. "I was thinking about how an entire oak tree resided in this acorn," she explains. She wanted Dear Acorn, (Love, Oak) to be "about how small things are part of big things. And big things need small things."
Artist — and Maine Master Naturalist — Melissa Sweet hand-painted her own watercolor paper and used collage materials to illustrate Dear Acorn, (Love, Oak). "I end up with many, many stacks of old scrap paper," Sweet says of her process.
One of her favorite collage materials to use? The insides of envelopes — the ones with patterns to conceal the check. "When I open up the envelope, I can Xerox them," Sweet explains, "and then I send my hand-painted watercolor paper through my Xerox machine. And now I have watercolor paper with these great little patterns on them… I'll do anything to try to make a fun pattern."
Melissa Sweet also used bubble wrap for this project to illustrate the bubbles in Sidman poem "Dear Sky."
"I often do a very simple printing process called jelly printing," Sweet says, "taking bubble wrap and pressing it on ink on the plate and then pulling the bubble wrap away. You get this gorgeous pattern of circles reminiscent of bubbles."
Even though she's a naturalist, Sweet says the great thing about picture books is that the illustrations don't have to be realistic. "I keep a lot of journals about the natural world and I care deeply about how I draw, say, a pileated woodpecker," says Sweet. A pileated woodpecker has a red crest, white neck stripe, and a mostly black body. The pileated woodpecker in Dear Acorn, (Love, Oak) has a hot pink crest and hot pink legs, but Sweet's illustration works.
"Somehow it looks even more like a pileated woodpecker with hot pink on its head," laughs author Joyce Sidman. "I don't know why."
"It's such fun to be able to just throw all the rules away," agrees Melissa Sweet, "and say, 'We can do whatever we want in this beautiful picture book.'"
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