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WILD WINGS by Jane Yolen

WILD WINGS

Poems for Young People

by Jane Yolen & photographed by Jason Stemple

Pub Date: April 1st, 2001
ISBN: 1-56397-904-7
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills

In their fifth mother-son collaboration (Color Me a Rhyme, 2000, etc.), Stemple’s bird photos spark 14 poems from the prolific Yolen, with added captions for all but the final pairing folding in snippets of natural history. The pictures, taken in the southern or western US, are mostly of aquatic birds or raptors, and so sharply focused that each tiny feather on the anhinga’s neck, each lapidary detail of the turkey buzzard’s scarlet head, is plain to see. Yolen writes with terse lucidity, her thoughts alternating between prey/predator relationships, and moments of beauty: “As if sunshine / fell down on a branch, / then gathered itself together / for one solid moment, / the warbler brightens spring.” Recently hatched ornithologists and fans of Yolen’s Bird Watch (1990) hoping for more of the same will warble over this fresh gathering of words and images. (Poetry. 7-11)