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|  | | | Mud by Mary Lyn Ray
Synopsis:
Ms. Ray take sthe unjustly neglected subject of "gooey, gloppy, mucky, magnificent mud" and transforms it from the mundane to a "lyrical celebration of the cycle of the seasons". The joy of a child playing in mud is tied to our fifth season in such lines as "A cold sweet smell rises in the ground, like sap in the snow." Ray uses spirited language to show a child's playfulness as the mud thaws and comes alive with spring.
This blithe view of one of the building blocks of life can come only form close observation;  | | Mary Lyn Ray |
the point of view is at ground level, where readers can visually much around in all that goo. The transformation of winter frost to mud serves as a spawning stage for the green of the new season. This is a concept treated innumverable times in books but never quite like this. Wallow in it.
About the author:
Mary Lyn Ray is the author of several children's books, was a Fellow at Winterthur Museum, where she studied American crafts such as Taghkanic basket making. She lives on an old farm in South Danbury, New Hampshire.
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