In Sharon Creech’s verse novel Love that Dog (2001), Miss Stretchberry knew how to engage her student Jack with poetry. Here is a collection seemingly directed at Jack and those classmates who might on their own dip into verse with simple rhythms and rhymes. Such is the appeal of this collection of 30 poems about objects found at the beach, in an attic, at flea markets and other places. The major drawback of this collection is the dated, nostalgic quality of both verse and subject. Robbins’s astonishing photographs provide background to the poems and a necessary jolt of contemporary visual excitement, stealing drama from the verse. It is a shame that there is no author’s or photographer’s note about the creative process: How did Robbins find a piece of wood that so closely resembles the “Driftwood Bird” Frank describes? Perhaps Miss Stretchberry could ask Jack and his classmates to write their own object poems inspired by these amazing photos, enabling them to join the ranks of such poets as Ralph Fletcher or Valerie Worth. (Poetry. 8-12)
Pub Date: April 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59643-197-3
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008
In 1995, Mrs. Fibonacci laid a Math Curse; this year, it’s Mr. Newton who says, “ . . . if you listen closely enough, you can hear the poetry of science in everything.” What follows is a madcap collection of science poetry that lampoons familiar songs (“Glory, glory, evolution”) and poems (“Once in first grade I was napping”). The whole lacks the zany unity of its predecessor, opting for an impressionistic tour of scientific terms and principles; the illustrations are less integrated into the text as well, if individually often quite inspired (a set of antiqued nursery rhyme panels are just perfect). Some of the poems rise to the level of near genius (“ ’Twas fructose, and the vitamins / Did zinc and dye [red #8]”), while others settle for the satisfyingly gross (“Mary had a little worm. / She thought it was a chigger”). If this offering falls short of the standard set by Math Curse, it will nevertheless find an eager audience, who will hope that the results of Mr. Picasso’s curse will soon be forthcoming. (Poetry. 8-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-91057-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hall (The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse in America, 1985, etc.), offers up a chestnut-flavored alternative for younger readers, matching roughly contemporary illustrations to one or two selections from each of 57 American poets. To the usual suspects—Eugene Field’s “Wynken, Blynken and Nod,” Emily Dickinson’s “I’m nobody, who are you?” and even Carl Sandburg’s “Fog”—he adds more recent works from the likes of Jack Prelutsky, Gary Soto, Sandra Cisneros, and Janet S. Wong; he also includes three poems attributed somewhat baldly to an “Anonymous Native American.” The art comprises a gallery of American illustration, from crude 18th-century woodcuts, through Jessie Willcox Smith, to Marcia Brown and the Dillons. Writing that “poetry is most poetry when it makes noise,” Hall recommends these verses for reading aloud and memorization, exhorting parents and children to appreciate how they “preserve a moment of the American past.” A safe collection, seldom veering from the canon. (index) (Poetry. 9-11)
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-19-512373-5
Page Count: 93
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
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