Through Four Seasons Nature And Science Readers

Dear Girls and Boys: You are the same children all through the year, but you do not look just the same in winter and in summer. Your January clothes are different from those you wear in July. Perhaps the color of your skin is changed, too. It will be a few shades darker during the season of brightest sunshine if you are outdoors as much as you should be. You may have more freckles in summer, and perhaps your hair will be bleached by the sun to a little different shade. People do not do exactly the same things in spring as they do in the fall. Farmers plant seeds in the ground in the spring. In the fall they harvest food for winter use. Storekeepers show different things in their shop windows in summer and winter. Fashions change in games as well as in work. You like to play some games in summer that would not be nearly so pleasant in winter. People may be happy at any time in the year, and yet there is some difference in the kinds of happiness. The joy you have in looking at the first pussy willow or bluet or violet or other spring flower is not quite the same as that you feel in the jolly fall, when the chattering squirrel gathers his acorns and the trees let their gay leaves go fluttering down. If people do not look and act and feel just the same at different times of the year, what about the rest of the world? Well, a bobolink is the same bird in the fall as he is in the spring, although he does not look and act the same. In the spring he wears a suit of white and black and yellow, but in the fall his feathers show mostly olive and brown colors. He does not act the same, either. In the spring he sings a joyous bubbling song of many lovely, lively notes. In the fall he repeats, over and over again, one call that sounds as if he were answering the rest of the bobolinks, who are all making the same sociable sound. You will understand that there is not room in one book to tell about more than a few of the wonderful things in the world, for a book is small and the world itself is very large. There are indeed more interesting things in the world than have ever been described in all the books that have been printed. So suppose that you read the chapters in this book and think about them in a special way. Think about them as samples of what the world has to show. Then perhaps you will wish to look at the things of the world for yourselves. We wish you happy hours—all through the year. Your friends, Edith M. Patch Harrison E. Howe

An engaging introduction to a variety of natural phenomena that occur throughout the year. The seven stories for each season cover a range of topics from animal and plant life to geology and physics. Each chapter concludes with a list of activities to pursue and stories to read to excite further interest.

Seasons follow one another in a continuous pattern, during which changes in nature can be observed (cut-paper illustrations show birds, flowers, leaves, snowflakes).

Elegant representations of nature and the four seasons populate a wide range of Japanese genres and media—from poetry and screen painting to tea ceremonies, flower arrangements, and annual observances. In Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shirane shows how, when, and why this practice developed and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings of this imagery. Refuting the belief that this tradition reflects Japan's agrarian origins and supposedly mild climate, Shirane traces the establishment of seasonal topics to the poetry composed by the urban nobility in the eighth century. After becoming highly codified and influencing visual arts in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the seasonal topics and their cultural associations evolved and spread to other genres, eventually settling in the popular culture of the early modern period. Contrasted with the elegant images of nature derived from court poetry was the agrarian view of nature based on rural life. The two landscapes began to intersect in the medieval period, creating a complex, layered web of competing associations. Shirane discusses a wide array of representations of nature and the four seasons in many genres, originating in both the urban and rural perspective: textual (poetry, chronicles, tales), cultivated (gardens, flower arrangement), material (kimonos, screens), performative (noh, festivals), and gastronomic (tea ceremony, food rituals). He reveals how this kind of "secondary nature," which flourished in Japan's urban architecture and gardens, fostered and idealized a sense of harmony with the natural world just at the moment it was disappearing. Illuminating the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts, Shirane clarifies the use of natural images and seasonal topics and the changes in their cultural associations and function across history, genre, and community over more than a millennium. In this fascinating book, the four seasons are revealed to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world.

Read about the things that change outdoors with the season, including the hours of sunlight and the temperature.

Cold winters, hot summers--year after year the seasons repeat themselves. But what causes them? Why is there winter in the Southern Hemisphere at the same time there is summer in the Northern Hemisphere? In summertime, why is it still light out in the evening? With simple language appropriate for young readers, non-fiction master Gail Gibbons introduces young readers to the four seasons and explains why they change throughout the year. Newly revised and vetted by experts, this updated edition of The Reasons for Seasons introduces the solstices, the equinoxes, and the tilt in Earth's axis that causes them, and gives examples of what each season is like across the globe from pole to pole. Clear, simple diagrams of the earth's orbit are labeled with important vocabulary, explained and reinforced with accessible explanations. Fascinating and easy to understand, this is a perfect introduction to seasons, earth's orbit, and axial tilt. Different effects on different parts of the world are included, illustrating the difference in climate between the equator, the northern and southern hemispheres, and the polar regions.

Follow along with Don and Nan as they encounter one marvel after another in their visits out-of-doors through all seasons of the year. With adults to answer their questions and inspire them to further discovery, they learn an amazing amount of information about a handful of birds, insects, plants, and trees. Numerous illustrations, with accompanying large-print text in simple sentences, make this an ideal nature book for beginning readers.

In this first look at the four seasons of the year, readers learn how their environments change throughout the year and get a glimpse of the science behind the seasons.