All Things Bright and Beautiful

Cecil Frances Humphreys Alexander (1818-1895) was an Irish hymn writer and poetess.  Born in Dublin, Ireland in the 1800’s, she first began writing verse when she was a little girl.  Mrs. Alexander would eventually write over 400 hymns and many poems.  The welfare of children was deeply important to her.  She donated the proceeds from her book Hymns for Little Children from which All Things Bright and Beautiful comes, to help build and maintain a school for children who were deaf or mute. In addition to All Things Bright and Beautiful Mrs. Alexander’s hymn There is a Green Hill Far Away and the Christmas carol Once in Royal David’s City are sung and celebrated all around the world. Ashley Bryan (1923–2022) grew up to the sound of his mother singing from morning to night, and he shared the joy of song with children. A beloved illustrator, he was named a Newbery Honoree for his picture book, Freedom Over Me. He also received the Coretta Scott King—Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, was a May Hill Arbuthnot lecturer, a Coretta Scott King Award winner, and the recipient of countless other awards and recognitions. His books include Freedom Over Me; Sail Away; Beautiful Blackbird; Beat the Story-Drum, Pum Pum; Let It Shine; Ashley Bryan’s Book of Puppets; and What a Wonderful World. He lived in Islesford, one of the Cranberry Isles off the coast of Maine.

Bryan’s artwork is at its best in this interpretation of the title’s famous hymn, written by nineteenthcentury Irish poet Cecil Alexander to a seventeenth-century melody. The bright, swirling, colored-paper collage images focus on earth’s creatures, in the sea, on land, and in the sky, as well as on the connections between them. The images come to a climax in a gorgeous, double-page spread of two young girls, one black, one white, celebrating who they are and what they see in the world: children, flowers, mountains, trees, stars, the moon, and the sun. Using the musical score printed on the last page, grown-ups can sing along as they share the book with young kids, who will want to point to the small details in every scene even as they absorb the sweeping sense of the interconnected world. From deep-sea views of a whale and fish to soaring scenes of a purple mountaintop, the rainbow theme is constant and extends to pictures of an arch that fills the sky and beams that glow from the open pages of a book. On other spreads, children of all races celebrate sunset and morning, the winter wind and summer sun, and lush gardens, with the words that God almighty made them all. A beautiful celebration of the elemental creation story. — Hazel Rochman, BOOKLIST, March 1, 2010, STAR