When Poems Fall From the Sky, paperback

Author: Zaro Weil. With illustrations by Junli Song. 166 pages, colour illustrations throughout, 210 x 175 mm. Paperback, ISBN 978 180338 060 5, Welbeck Editions in association with RBG Kew, 2022.

In exquisitely illustrated full colour pages trees, birds, animals, rivers, flowers, mountains and insects each share their own magical stories. And the stories they tell, the 'poems' that fall from the sky, subtly and powerfully illuminate our hope and collective role as guardians of our earth. Original, inspiring and intimate When Poems Fall from the Sky celebrates the marriage of science and poetry.

Imagine the greatest botanist wizard flying off with all the seeds in the world to save the planet or a mushroom punkrock band rapping about super-hero spores and the woodwide-web. Or Mother Nature herself pointing out some remarkable symbiotic relationships. Imagine a nightingale, a tree, a seed singing its very own story in its very own words or a flower garden playing uproarious rhyming games with the sun. Picture a raucous, rowdy and hilarious performance when all ten quintillion bugs on earth try to line up for a parade. Then imagine a dance with the moon and a butterfly’s song to the wind.

At its heart, When Poems Fall from the Sky is a tender and thoughtful love-letter to earth and deserves a special place on every child's bookshelf.

Zaro Weil lives in southern France with her husband, Spot Guevara Hero Dog and a host of birds, insects, badgers, wild boars, crickets, donkeys, goats, hares and loads more. She has been a lot of things; dancer, theatre director, actress, poet, playwright, educator,
quilt collector, historian, author and publisher. Zaro's previous collections, Firecrackers and Cherry Moon were widely praised and lauded for their brilliant wordsmithery and lyricism and their wonderful production and design. Cherry Moon won the prestigious Clippa award for outstanding children’s poetry in 2020.

Junli Song studied economics and international development at the University of Chicago and then at the University of Oxford before radically changing course to study for an MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Anglia Ruskin. On completion in 2018 she won a
fellowship at Spudnik Press, a printmaking collective in her home town of Chicago, and is currently studying for a Master’s in Fine Art. She previously illustrated Zaro’s Cherry Moon, published in 2019 to wide acclaim for its brilliant poetry and beautiful illustrations.