Mindful poems and art worth pausing for.
Verse on everyday topics.
Featuring work by long-celebrated poets and new voices, this collection begins with an introduction in which Risbridger discusses the inequities that women and those outside the gender binary have long faced. “This book,” she writes, “is my best shot at making sure that whenever someone picks up a poetry book, they’ll find plenty of poems by girls.” The volume covers sometimes overlapping topics such as family, daily rituals, nature, animals, identity, activism, and poetry itself. Risbridger’s careful editorial arrangement is complemented by Shepeta’s dynamic illustrations, each page building to an immersive experience. As a whole, the book is an inspired celebration of life and meaning, with vivid imagery, complex themes, distilled life lessons, and bold windows into a rich array of experiences, from Janet S. Wong’s ode to her grandmother to Jan Dean’s tribute to Rosa Parks. Shepeta’s bright tones and rich, full-page illustrations convey whimsy while retaining a realism that effectively grounds each poem. This accessible work will appeal to reluctant readers, those seeking read-alouds, and aspiring writers keen to play with words. The compilation reflects diversity throughout in authorship, content, and art, and the finely crafted whole conveys the value of poetry both as a vehicle of expression and as a tool for reflection and meaning-making.
Mindful poems and art worth pausing for. (afterword, indexes by poem, poets, and first lines) (Poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9798887770550
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
Adoff creates a moving meditation on the roots of American blues. The poet explores the profound relationship between the enslavement of Africans and the music born of that brutalization: “This New World music m o v e s with shackle sounds.” Recurring metaphors flow through the 60 poems, riffing on trauma and triumph. Metal, for one: the clank of chains on ships and chain gangs; a hoe striking rock; the reverberating steel of guitar strings and piano wire. Blood signifies death but also “the / r i c h / red / c h i l d / b i r t h / c o l o r / o f / j o y.” Spare, spondaic lines pulse, connecting the mundane (church, cooking) with the music’s transcendence. Some poems center on specific performers. The poet wryly considers Robert Johnson’s alleged bargain with the devil: “We can still tell that story and smile as we sing his words. His soul is in his songs and his songs live deep on blue e a r t h.” Christie’s Expressionistic acrylics employ a palette of crimson, teal and brown, reserving grays for faces and hands, linking shackled slaves with sharecroppers, rocking grandmothers with juke-joint dancers. An incandescent, important work. (Poetry. 8 & up)
Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-23554-7
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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