Perry and Snow join a time-honored tradition with this gallery of annoying but elusive beasts, from the titular crusher of bagged junk food to the Scary-Hair Fairy and the nocturnal Snorist: “That sound is the Snorist. / It means that he chose / to sneak with his tuba inside your dad’s nose.” Featuring strong rhythms and (generally) exact rhymes, the verses make first-rate read-alouds, and Snow’s brightly colored, oddly proportioned and often deliciously messy cartoon figures add plenty of comical visual notes to each spread. Expect belly laughs aplenty, particularly from Shel Silverstein fans, and readers/listeners fond of Jack Prelutsky’s Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant! (2006), illus by Carin Berger, or other similar gatherings of imaginary creatures. (Poetry. 9-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2007
ISBN: 0-689-85469-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2007
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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