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Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors

Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors is a children's picture book written by American children's writer Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski and published by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children. The book follows the changes of the seasons through the year by looking at colors and what they are doing throughout the year. The book was an Honor book for the Caldecott Medal and won the Claudia Lewis Poetry Award in 2010. Other awards and honors Red Sings from Treetops has earned include the Minnesota Book Award, Cybils Poetry Award, the Bulletin Blue Ribbon and Booklist Editor's Choice.

Synopsis
The book, which Sidman describes as a "thread that starts in spring and celebrates the colors through the seasons", is divided into four sections with the headings Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. In each section, Sidman provides a poetic description of the titular season using colors to convey what occurs at that time of year, such as leaves budding in the spring being "Shy. / Green peeks from buds, / trembles in the breeze.". Most pages are dedicated to one or two colors, and the poetry is accompanied by images provided by Zagarenski. Almost all of the images follow a person and their dog participating in seasonal activities, both of whom are typically wearing a paper crown and are otherwise dressed for the weather.

Concept and Development
The idea for Red Sings from Treetops came to Sidman on daily walks through the woods where she would see color everywhere in all of the seasons. In an interview after winning the Minnesota Book Award, she states that she had "always wanted to write a book about color", but wanted it to be different from the many books that already explored the topic. It took several years to develop a structure for the text that work well with the content and show how she felt about color and nature while still being different from other children's books about similar things. In the previously mentioned interview, Sidman says that what she finally settled on in terms of structure was "a way of personifying the colors, of making them come alive and describing them as if they were alive".