In the fine tradition of Jack Prelutsky’s Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast, illustrated by Arnold Lobel (1988), a set of dinophile-pleasing verses penned by a poet with a rare knack for wordplay and silly rhymes finds apt visual setting fronting playful images of monsters rearing up from extinction to grin toothily at young viewers. Sandwiched between poems about the Age of Dinosaurs and its sudden end, Florian parades 18 creatures, from Pterosaurs (“They were not ptame. / They were ptenacious— / From the Ptriassic / Pto the Cretaceous.”) to T. Rex, then closes with an informative “Glossarysaurus,” plus museum and source lists. Spectacularly depicted (as is his frequent custom) on paper bags in crayon and collage, the poet’s dinos are easily recognizable despite being freely rendered and, often, semitransparent. Collage elements add to the visual excitement, often to great effect—a skeletal, iPod-sporting T. Rex prepares to chow down on a heap of cut-out dinosaur bits—and always with enormous playfulness. Children fixated on explicit gore may be left unmoved, but to everyone else this will be a dino-delight—especially when read aloud. (Picture book/poetry. 5-10)
Pub Date: March 10, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7978-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A superlative union of verse and visual art.
The Pulitzer Prize–winning poet’s tribute to the relationship between goldfinches and thistles finds new life in picture-book form.
In languorously unfolding phrases, Oliver, who died in 2019, notes that the birds wait all summer for the thistle flowers to disseminate their seeds. The finches then use the fluffy, silky pappus—which, attached to the seeds, helps them disperse in the wind—to line their nests, while the seeds themselves feed both parents and young. Sweet ingeniously nestles hand-lettered finch facts into spreads that teem with vibrant color charts keyed to the poem’s imagery. She depicts the poet as a young woman, wandering fields and woods, notebook at hand and trailed by a dog, as a diverse group of birdwatchers look on. Using vintage papers, old maps, and photographed objects including a nest, the artist subdivides her layered compositions into multiple rectangles, inviting close observation and delighted discovery, while reserving plenty of airy space for Oliver’s poem to shine. Sweet’s palette, rich in pinks and yellows, derives from the bright plumage of male goldfinches and the brilliance of flowering thistles, “each bud / a settlement of riches— / a coin of reddish fire.” Oliver concludes: “Is it necessary to say any more? / Have you heard them singing in the wind…? // Have you ever been so happy in your life?”
A superlative union of verse and visual art. (text of poem, Oliver’s handwritten bird list, illustrator’s note, quote from Oliver, sources) (Picture book/poetry. 5-9)Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9780593692417
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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