This zany assortment of poetry is loosely organized around a bathroom theme. The eclectic subject matter of the 21 poems runs the gamut from downright silly to slightly icky. Selections such as “Troubles,” which celebrates the restorative powers of a bubble bath, and “Ahoy,” an ode to imaginative playtime in the tub, will appeal to younger readers. However, the wry humor of other selections, including “The Medicine Cabinet” and “Chore,” provides a plethora of “euww” moments for less squeamish older readers (“It smells all musty. / It’s kind of crusty, / Damp and dank, / And even rusty. / It’s a chore / We all abhor, / Cleaning the toilet, / Where it meets the floor”). Nonetheless, Shields’s creative wordplay and clever wit moderate the yuck factor and consistently provoke laughs. Meisel’s cheerfully irreverent illustrations provide a droll backdrop (quite literally, in the case of the toilet poem) to the playful rhymes. Whether teachers like it or not, this is sure to see a lot of use during poetry units. (Picture book/poetry. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-525-47937-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
This heavily earnest celebration of multi-ethnicity combines full-bleed paintings of smiling children, viewed through a golden haze dancing, playing, planting seedlings, and the like, with a hyperbolic, disconnected text—``Dark as leopard spots, light as sand,/Children buzz with laughter that kisses our land...''— printed in wavy lines. Literal-minded readers may have trouble with the author's premise, that ``Children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea'' (green? blue?), and most of the children here, though of diverse and mixed racial ancestry, wear shorts and T-shirts and seem to be about the same age. Hamanaka has chosen a worthy theme, but she develops it without the humor or imagination that animates her Screen of Frogs (1993). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-11131-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Echoing Ashley Wolff’s 1988 approach to Stevenson’s poetic tribute to the power of imagination, Kirk begins with neatly drawn scenes of a child in a playroom, assembling large wooden blocks into, “A kirk and a mill and a palace beside, / And a harbor as well where my vessels may ride.” All of these acquire grand architectural details and toy-like inhabitants as the pages turn, until at last the narrator declares, “Now I have done with it, down let it go!” In a final twist, the young city-builder is shown running outside, into a well-kept residential neighborhood in which all the houses except his have been transformed into piles of blocks. Not much to choose between the two interpretations, but it’s a poem that every child should have an opportunity to know. (Picture book/poetry. 5-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-689-86964-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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