Philosophically speaking, I don't really believe life is a dream, but poetically speaking, I can imagine it is, especially after I've spent some time immersed in the luscious colors and poetic imagery of a picture book like
A Perfect Season for Dreaming/Un tiempo perfecto para sonar (Cinco Punto Press, 2008) by Benjamin Alire Saenz. It tells the story of Octavio Rivera, an old man whose summer afternoon siestas have been visited by vibrant and puzzling dreams about objects and people bursting out of a pinata in the sky. Octavio longs to tell someone about his dreams but fears being laughed at or misunderstood--until it finally occurs to him to tell his granddaughter, Regina, who always tells him her dreams. What I love about the story is that the dreams are never analyzed, never explained. They don't turn out to be prophecies of the future or revelations of buried secrets. They are simply reflections of the mind of the dreamer: abstract, intangible works of art that can only be accessed by those who win the artist's confidence.
I don't know much about art myself, but the paintings that grace the pages of this book are stunning. The colors are rich, the images fanciful--just what dreams should look like, especially on a summer afternoon. My favorite part was reading the Spanish translations by Esau Andrade Valencia. They are lyrical and lovely, and even I, as a non-fluent Spanish speaker, could read them first and then skim the English above to find out if I had missed anything. (That was a fun exercise for me, but of course, not an essential part of reading the book; I'm just really into bilingual picture books lately, so if you know of a good one, drop me a line.)
If you love picture books that are truly hand-crafted works of art, please don't let the summer end without diving into the dreams of Octavio Rivera.
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