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I WISH I HAD A WOOKIEE

Name: I WISH I HAD A WOOKIEE
Author: Ian Doescher
ISBN: 978-1-59474-962-9

AND OTHER POEMS FOR OUR GALAXY

by Ian Doescher ; illustrated by Tim Budgen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 28, 2021

The poet’s definitely up on his Star Wars canon, and readers had better be, too, to keep pace.

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The author of The Empire Striketh Back (2014) tries his hand at light verse.

For all that he experiments with a villanelle, a shaped poem, and other forms, overall Doescher keeps to a rolling beat as he spins out a hefty 79 poems thick with names, places, and references to events in the films and other media. “G is for Greedo, that green guy’s the worst! / H is for Han (who, with no doubt, shot first).” One poem addresses race directly (“Jeff has Poe-colored skin, / While Joseph’s more like Finn”), and another wishes that, whatever’s going on in a galaxy far, far away, “Star Peace” would come to this one. In rather odd contrast, “If I were a stormtrooper,” writes a child, “I’d practice my aim anytime there’s a break / (So I wouldn’t miss every shot that I make”). Nevertheless, in general the verses’ actual subjects tend toward conventional domestic matters, from the titular bedtime verse, which begins “I wish I had a Wookiee, / To keep the monsters out,” to little Mackenzie Hale, who “would not eat her kale.” Budgen’s ink, wash, and occasionally color scenes of licensed characters or of smiling, racially diverse children, often in costume or with licensed toys, are likewise benign. Like a celebrity tell-all, the collection is capped by an index of, mostly, characters and creatures.

The poet’s definitely up on his Star Wars canon, and readers had better be, too, to keep pace. (Poetry. 8-11)

Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-59474-962-9

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Quirk Books

Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY

COUNTING IN DOG YEARS AND OTHER SASSY MATH POEMS

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COUNTING IN DOG YEARS AND OTHER SASSY MATH POEMS

by Betsy Franco ; illustrated by Priscilla Tey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 2022

Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY

- BOOK REVIEW
A SPECTACULAR SELECTION OF SEA CRITTERS
by Betsy Franco ; illustrated by Michael Wertz

- BOOK REVIEW
DOUBLE PLAY
by Betsy Franco & illustrated by Doug Cushman

- BOOK REVIEW
METAMORPHOSIS
by Betsy Franco & illustrated by Tom Franco

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POEM DEPOT

AISLES OF SMILES

by Douglas Florian ; illustrated by Douglas Florian ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 20, 2014

Overall, a thick collection of humorous verse that might have been funnier with thinner ambitions.

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Gifted poet and illustrator Florian (Poem Runs: Baseball Poems, 2012, etc.) here presents a chunky collection of drawings and brief poems on a host of silly subjects.

Posited as a superstore of verse on assorted topics children care about—school, family, animals, food and the like—one also can’t help thinking this “depot” represents a midway point for a number of poems that haven’t quite reached their creative destinations. To be truly effective, light or nonsensical verse should be as tight in its poetic construction as it is loosely suggestive in metaphorical associations, and a number of the works assembled here simply read as not fully cooked. The volume’s more successful poems tend to employ wordplay to elicit a chuckle or illustrate delightfully nonsensical truisms about language, as in “Insect Asides”: “A dragonfly is not a fly. / It’s not a dragon either. / No butter on a butterfly, / And bees cannot spell neither.” Likewise, when paired well, Florian’s free-form pen-and-ink drawings enhance the whimsical nature of the fanciful scenes depicted. In “Pets,” a creepy drawing of a girl with hairy spiders crawling all over her face offers a convincing explanation for the accompanying poem’s punch line: “Bruce has ten pet roosters. / Ben has ten pet hens. / Fran has ten tarantulas, / But not too many friends.”

Overall, a thick collection of humorous verse that might have been funnier with thinner ambitions. (Poetry. 9-11)