Children may wish to compose nonets after delving into this unusual, entertaining collection.
Hail the divine number nine!
Nine shines in this nonet anthology. A nonet is a nine-line poem about any subject and may rhyme but doesn’t have to. Heeding the syllables in a nonet’s lines is vital: The first line contains one syllable; each line thereafter adds one more in turn until the ninth line contains nine. However, this pattern can be reversed, and the offerings here reflect both counting schemes. Each nonet focuses on the number nine itself. “Before You Were Born” honors human gestation; “Nine Lives” salutes cats; “Play Ball!” refers to a baseball’s team’s nine players and the game’s nine innings. A few poems provide information: “The Little Rock Nine” nods to the landmark 1957 Arkansas school-integration effort; “Nonagon” introduces the nine-sided geometric shape; “Beethoven’s Ninth” highlights the composer’s last symphony. The anthology concludes with “The Whole Nine Yards,” a reminder that nine is the last one-digit numeral. As with many anthologies, the poems’ quality varies, though overall, they’re jaunty and read well. While most verses admirably demonstrate how cleverly poems can develop from strict adherence to form, some verses seem contrived in service to that principle. Colorful, lively illustrations depict a robustly diverse ensemble cast. Interesting backmatter adds an additional gloss on each poem and further celebrates the number nine.
Children may wish to compose nonets after delving into this unusual, entertaining collection. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62354-116-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A pleasant-enough gathering, with some bright spots.
Verses on diverse topics, to read fast or slow, loud or low, to audiences of one or many.
Coelho writes in such a casual, loose-jointed style that even a poem written to demonstrate how “rhyming words really pop!” forcibly yokes “stars” with “far” and “snows” with “grow.” He kits each short poem or group of poems with largely interchangeable performance suggestions, from “Start softly and finish LOUD. This is called crescendo!” to (for a choral presentation) an unhelpful “try reading some lines together and some lines separately.” The typography is likewise generic, as all the poems are printed in the same size and, except for bolded homophones in one about the experiences of a “Chilly Chili,” weight. Still, two scary entries—one featuring an unseen creature creeping up to whisper in your ear (“Don’t Look Now”), the other about unexpectedly coming upon a cave filled with human remains (“The Bones of Pampachiri”)—offer delicious chills that balance the lightheartedness of groups of riddles and tongue twisters. For visual exuberance, Gray-Barnett uses scribbly lines and garish colors to good effect, and children or other human figures, when they appear, seem a racially and ethnically diverse lot.
A pleasant-enough gathering, with some bright spots. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7112-4769-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fresh tribute to the creative possibilities of letter-form art: stylish and sophisticated.
A large-format letter-art menagerie from the Australian creator of Spellbound: Making Pictures With the A-B-C (2016).
Coote freely mixes typefaces, sizes, weights, and orientations but uses only the letters in the names of her animals (often repeatedly) to create 36 portraits—each on its own spread and rendered in a different, vivid color scheme. Presented in no discernible order, the animals, ranging from frog to koala, with elk, crab, and Afghan hound, among others, in between, are all composed of elaborate swirls and cascades, from which viewers are invited to pick out the letters with help from typographically consonant captions. While the pictures alone are an eyeful, the rhymed quatrains that accompany each add not only further letter-related prompts, but fresh washes of wit: “The hues of a chameleon / Depend on what she’s kneeling on.” (The emu’s reference to being on a “coat-of-arms” may confuse readers on this end of the Pacific, but a closing page of typographical and natural-history notes, in very tiny type, includes an explanation.) Budding letter detectives who’ve honed their skills on similarly themed outings such as Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich’s magisterial Bembo’s Zoo (2000) or Michael Arndt’s clever Cat Says Meow (2014) will still find their work cut out for them here.
A fresh tribute to the creative possibilities of letter-form art: stylish and sophisticated. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9924917-9-6
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Melbournestyle Books/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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