A solid introduction to a brilliant writer.
This brief biography of the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet features a handful of Brooks’ own poems interspersed with original verse about the woman and her writing.
The warm pink undertones of Brooks’ glowing brown face on the book’s cover fade to a muted brown and beige palette inside the book’s pages. Simple scenes and images use thick blurred lines and blocks of color as a background to the text as it recounts her life chronologically, from age 8 in 1925 to her winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. The poems about Brooks are headed by Roman numerals, I through IX. At first, she is “unsure,” watching and listening to the sounds and behaviors of the people in her neighborhood, writing poems in her journal and burying those that disappoint her. When her teacher accuses her of plagiarism, her mother has her write a poem in front of the teacher to prove her brilliance (the poem is included). Her parents believe in her and leave her “free to sit and think.” Her process is lovingly described: “She learns to labor for the love of words” through draft after draft. She befriends other poets and studies older poets. “She found her light. // And— / A furious flower / GREW!” The combination of biography and Brooks’ own poems makes for a strong, useful, and beautiful text; readers might wish, however, that Duncan’s words and Brooks’ were set in markedly different typefaces to better distinguish them.
A solid introduction to a brilliant writer. (author’s note, timeline, suggested reading, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 7-12)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4549-3088-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two.
Rollicking verses on “numerous” topics.
Returning to the theme of her Mathematickles! (2003), illustrated by Steven Salerno, Franco gathers mostly new ruminations with references to numbers or arithmetical operations. “Do numerals get out of sorts? / Do fractions get along? / Do equal signs complain and gripe / when kids get problems wrong?” Along with universal complaints, such as why 16 dirty socks go into a washing machine but only 12 clean ones come out or why there are “three months of summer / but nine months of school!" (“It must have been grown-ups / who made up / that rule!”), the poet offers a series of numerical palindromes, a phone number guessing game, a two-voice poem for performative sorts, and, to round off the set, a cozy catalog of countable routines: “It’s knowing when night falls / and darkens my bedroom, / my pup sleeps just two feet from me. / That watching the stars flicker / in the velvety sky / is my glimpse of infinity!” Tey takes each entry and runs with it, adding comically surreal scenes of appropriately frantic or settled mood, generally featuring a diverse group of children joined by grotesques that look like refugees from Hieronymous Bosch paintings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two. (Poetry/mathematical picture book. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0116-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Here’s hoping this will inspire many children to joyfully engage in writing.
Both technique and imaginative impulse can be found in this useful selection of poems about the literary art.
Starting with the essentials of the English language, the letters of “Our Alphabet,” the collection moves through 21 other poems of different types, meters, and rhyme schemes. This anthology has clear classroom applications, but it will also be enjoyed by individual readers who can pore carefully over playful illustrations filled with diverse children, butterflies, flowers, books, and pieces of writing. Tackling various parts of the writing process, from “How To Begin” through “Revision Is” to “Final Edit,” the poems also touch on some reasons for writing, like “Thank You Notes” and “Writing About Reading.” Some of the poems are funny, as in the quirky, four-line “If I Were an Octopus”: “I’d grab eight pencils. / All identical. / I’d fill eight notebooks. / One per tentacle.” An amusing undersea scene dominated by a smiling, orangy octopus fills this double-page spread. Some of the poems are more focused (and less lyrical) than others, such as “Final Edit” with its ending stanzas: “I check once more to guarantee / all is flawless as can be. / Careless errors will discredit / my hard work. / That’s why I edit. / But I don’t like it. / There I said it.” At least the poet tries for a little humor in those final lines.
Here’s hoping this will inspire many children to joyfully engage in writing. (Picture book/poetry. 7-10)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68437-362-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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