Time to Fly!

Time to Fly
Written and Illustrated by Valerie Wiebe
Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing
Review by Michelle Shaw
$24.95 ISBN 9781988783642

This beautiful hardcover book invites children of all ages to dream, to explore and discover how they fit into the world around them.

Author and illustrator Valerie Wiebe, who lives and works on a farm outside Langham, Saskatchewan, is a multitalented artist who has used her paintings as her inspiration for the text.

While younger children will be captivated by the bright colors and the rhythmic language, I think the book will be especially inviting to slightly older children who will be able to engage with the pictures and allow their imaginations to explore the possibilities in each painting. The book has also been suggested as an excellent gift for anyone beginning a new venture, including graduation.

I felt the drawings were almost like a blank canvas that gave my imagination freedom to dream and discover. Wiebe says the paintings in the book are intimate works that “require us to look close, to investigate the details, to observe the tiny figures.”

She is clearly captivated by the Prairies. “Standing in the rural landscape in which I live, I find myself feeling both a sense of awe and an awareness of my own insignificance.” This is vividly expressed in her paintings and is clearly evident on every page in Time to Fly. The illustrations in this book are actually part of The Big Earth, a series of paintings that has inspired her to explore the relationship between the landscape and our own fragility. Each painting is named and at the back of the book I was delighted to discover the author’s thoughts on each painting. It gave an added depth to the book.

The book is beautifully designed with lots of white space surrounding the text which is centered on the left-hand page with the full right page taken up with each painting.

Time to Fly will be a delight to anyone who is inspired and awestruck by the magnificence of the Prairies.

Valerie Wiebe is an artist, musician and designer living and working on a farm south of the town of Langham, Saskatchewan. Valerie holds degrees in Music, Arts Education, Fine Arts-Painting, and Fine Arts-Interior Architecture and Design. Her paintings and music are inspired by the wide swathes of sky and vast horizons of her home farm on the prairies. Find out more at www.wiebe.works

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM