Congratulations to Julie Morstad for Time Is a Flower, winner of the 2022 Annual Sheila Barry Best Canadian Picturebook of the Year Award. There will be a virtual celebration later this fall.
Time Is a Flower, by Julie Morstad. Published by Tundra.
Julie Morstad’s Time is a flower is a deep yet playful reflection on our relationship with time through a child’s point of view. With great insight and sensibility, Morstad depicts instants of everyday life that reveal time’s many subtleties, from the eagerness of waiting for a tooth to fall, to the disappointment of a destroyed sandcastle, buried by a fast, unexpected wave.
The sparse poetic text contrasts with the vibrant, lively illustrations that mostly cover the full extension of each double spread. Bright splashes of fluorescent pink, hues of purple and green coexist with large areas of white, establishing a visual rhythm of expansion and contraction that somehow also resembles the nature of time: sometimes slow and frozen, others fast and dynamic. Every double spread is a new metaphor, an invitation to interpret, capture or explain the passage of time, through relatable and thought-provoking situations. As in her many previous books, Morstad proves to be a skillful storyteller, questioning the concept of time while proposing creative answers through the brilliant interplay of words and images. Time is a flower is an exemplary picturebook, both a work of literature and a work of art.