Vancouver writer and teacher-librarian Nancy Hundal’s latest poetic picture book lovingly follows two city boys on a summer visit with their prairie cousins. A sensuous text captures the sounds, smells, and even mosquito bites of a languid summer vacation: “Heat shimmer, bug whine, freedom.” Judging from the vehicles pictured, the story is set in the 1970s. The city kids quickly immerse themselves in their new world of gophers, general stores, pickup trucks, livestock, “stubbornly straight highways,” front porches, home baking, drive-in movies, country weddings, wheat, and wind.

A prairie-born fine artist now living in Toronto, Brian Deines interprets this world in the rich, glowing earth-tone pastels familiar from his work for Janet Lunn’s Charlotte. There is lots of white space. The elegant book design showcases Deines’s art in several generous double-page spreads. Similar in intent to David Bouchard’s If You’re Not From the Prairie, this book offers genuine insight into another time and culture, even distinguishing between city and country words for meals.

Together, author and illustrator create a feeling of enormous space and slowed-down time. The book is a little longer than the standard 32 pages, mirroring the leisurely pace and episodic style within. A mood piece, Prairie Summer may not completely engage young readers in search of a story. The elegiac tone suggests that this book best fits the nostalgia-for-adult-readers category (much like the Murray Kimber version of Dylan Thomas’s Fern Hill), which is not to say that children won’t like it too. Think of it as an intergenerational book, since an older narrator is implied.