An ebullient yet harmonious cache of assorted poems by a Guyanese performance poet who has made Great Britain his home since 1977. Adolescent readers will appreciate verse that is playful and energetic yet may address the joy of language (“Poetry Jump Up”) as well as serious topics of bullying (“The Hunt Boy”), racial identity (“Half-Caste), racism (“The Giant with a Taste for Mongrel Blood”) and politics (“The Ozone Liar”). Agard’s poetry toys with readers by offering poems without punctuation and with invented spelling; yet, he offers verse on the topic of grammar (“Punctuating the Silence”), the stuff of which can make any punctuation lesson nearly joyful. Teachers will find this book a calming and positive voice in a classroom and will come to think of the collection as a paradise of teaching opportunities. (Poetry. 12+)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-340-89382-6
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Hodder Children’s Books/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hall (The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse in America, 1985, etc.), offers up a chestnut-flavored alternative for younger readers, matching roughly contemporary illustrations to one or two selections from each of 57 American poets. To the usual suspects—Eugene Field’s “Wynken, Blynken and Nod,” Emily Dickinson’s “I’m nobody, who are you?” and even Carl Sandburg’s “Fog”—he adds more recent works from the likes of Jack Prelutsky, Gary Soto, Sandra Cisneros, and Janet S. Wong; he also includes three poems attributed somewhat baldly to an “Anonymous Native American.” The art comprises a gallery of American illustration, from crude 18th-century woodcuts, through Jessie Willcox Smith, to Marcia Brown and the Dillons. Writing that “poetry is most poetry when it makes noise,” Hall recommends these verses for reading aloud and memorization, exhorting parents and children to appreciate how they “preserve a moment of the American past.” A safe collection, seldom veering from the canon. (index) (Poetry. 9-11)
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-19-512373-5
Page Count: 93
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
Less a story than an analysis of Matisse’s art, particularly after his move to Nice, this companion to A Blue Butterfly (1995), on Monet, also combines visual recasting of selected works with poetic commentary: “To his color palette he added the bluest sapphire blue he could imagine. And with it he painted the Mediterranean Sea.” Using a free style of brushwork that evokes Matisse’s own joy and energy, Le Tord alternates her versions of his art with scenes of the man himself, always nattily dressed, always industriously making art. This perceptive personal tribute will enhance readers’ appreciation for Matisse’s work; they won’t mind going elsewhere for biographical details, and reproductions of his actual paintings, sculpture, and collages. (Picture book. 8-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8028-5184-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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