Cyrus (The Mousery, 2000, etc.) promises bugs and verses, and delivers plenty of both in this ground-level view of a vegetable garden's teeming residents. Depicting every creature from beetles, flies, snails, and spiders to the occasional snake ("Through the tangle, softly gliding, / Comes a long, long tummy sliding . . . ") or bird with delicious realism, he introduces such appealing characters as a confused young frog who wonders where his tail went, Mama Pitter-Patter-Pede with her "half a hundred legs," and a squad of industrious dung beetles: “ 'Papa, O Papa Bug, what will we eat?' / 'It's gummy, it's yummy, it's dung! What a treat.' ” The poems are distinct but untitled, connected both by common characters and by such running jokes as a season-long snail race, and a string of woozy ants that bonk heads to communicate. With no sacrifice of legibility, the page design is inventive too, with poems and pictures ingeniously wrapped together and occasional lines of text snaking along stems or through ground litter. Two-legged fans of Douglas Florian's Insectlopedia (1998) and J. Patrick Lewis's The Little Buggers (1998) will scurry after this verbal and visual tour-de-force. (Poetry. 7-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-202205-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With an eye toward easy memorization, Katz gathers over 50 short poems from the likes of Emily Dickinson, Valerie Worth, Jack Prelutsky, and Lewis Carroll, to such anonymous gems as “The Burp”—“Pardon me for being rude. / It was not me, it was my food. / It got so lonely down below, / it just popped up to say hello.” Katz includes five of her own verses, and promotes an evident newcomer, Emily George, with four entries. Hafner surrounds every selection with fine-lined cartoons, mostly of animals and children engaged in play, reading, or other familiar activities. Amid the ranks of similar collections, this shiny-faced newcomer may not stand out—but neither will it drift to the bottom of the class. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-525-47172-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
A dozen familiar dinosaurs introduce themselves in verse in this uninspired, if colorful, new animal gallery from the authors of Commotion in the Ocean (2000). Smiling, usually toothily, and sporting an array of diamonds, lightning bolts, spikes and tiger stripes, the garishly colored dinosaurs make an eye-catching show, but their comments seldom measure up to their appearance: “I’m a swimming reptile, / I dive down in the sea. / And when I spot a yummy squid, / I eat it up with glee!” (“Ichthyosaurus”) Next to the likes of Kevin Crotty’s Dinosongs (2000), illustrated by Kurt Vargo, or Jack Prelutsky’s classic Tyrannosaurus Was A Beast (1988), illustrated by Arnold Lobel, there’s not much here to roar about. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-58925-044-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
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