Wide-ranging poems and whimsical illustrations combine to yield uneven degrees of comedic success.
British poet Hegley here assembles 45 poems offering light, sometimes wildly offbeat perspectives on a variety of topics.
Loosely following the alphabet—“A Mosquito” is included under “A”; likewise, “Invisible Hamster” helps represent “I”—Hegley presents young readers with some odd thoughts as well as both common and not-so-common members of the animal kingdom. Though mostly presented in free verse, the occasional rhyme helps sets the playful tone: “To an alligator, you look yum. / You are yum to the tum of an alligator. / Though you think and you can feel, / To an alligator, you are a meal deal.” In many instances, Hegley’s often scribbly, black-and-white illustrations (Rawlinson has provided the letters) reinforce his quirky sense of humor, such as in “Micycle,” which features a sketch of a bike with a mouse for a seat offering its ears as handle bars, or “Xylofox,” a most unusual creature that “eats its words off armour plates” and whose rough, foxy frame consists mostly of a xylophone and fluffy tail. While many of Hegley’s ditties are accessible enough for children to find amusing, a handful sport a thematic level of sophistication better appreciated by adults. Along with some advanced vocabulary, young American readers may be stymied by various Briticisms never encountered before—even when presented by characters as familiar as the lice-checking school nurse, “Nitty Nora—The Bug Explorer!”
Wide-ranging poems and whimsical illustrations combine to yield uneven degrees of comedic success. (Poetry. 9-13)Pub Date: April 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-84780-397-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Forbes tenders a curiously wayward collection of animal love poetry.
“For soon they’ll grow up and want to go play / With game skunky guys for a sniff and a spray.” Sure, if educated fleas do it, then skunks do it: They fall in love. But Cole Porter might have framed it differently, as it seems a little rich for 7-year-olds, the starting audience for which this book is disingenuously pegged in its marketing: 7 to 70. Elsewhere, readers will find “a pig whose name is Squig,” a “camel named Kim” and a “doe gazelle named Mellow”—not to forget “[t]wo raccoons, Liz and Rick” (whose name suddenly turns to Dick in the last stanza), none of whom will tickle too many 60-year-olds. And for such a handsome production—the paper is lovely, and the reproductions of Searles’ illustrations, with their wonderful spidery, anarchic linework and trails of color that leave afterimages, are terrific—it is jarring to find “unfatihfulness” and “morning dove” (though the last occurs in one of the better poems, about a sea gull leaving home—the beach—because he is tired of the soggy French fries). Of the 27 poems here, Forbes best hits his stride in the longer pieces, especially “Down at the Old Mill Inn,” with its cast of unsavories kept in check by the headwaiter. Unfortunately, the extended poems are too few and far between, though Searles’ artwork (he died in 2011) saves the book’s bacon. (Poetry. 10-12)
Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59020-808-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Duckworth/Overlook
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
A sampler worth sampling, despite pallid illustrations and a roster entirely made up of dead or veteran poets.
Kitted out—as usual for volumes in the Poetry for Young People series—with biographical headers and an outstanding introductory overview, the 33 short selections follow a generally chronological course. Atypically, the editors steer largely clear of explicit racial or religious themes in their selections. Phillis Wheatley’s pointed “Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, / May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train,” and James Weldon Johnson’s “The Creation” stand as exceptions. Along with contributions from James Baldwin and Richard Wright (both better known for their prose), notable additions to the standard African-American poetic canon include 19th-century writers George Moses Horton and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. More-recent meditations from Melvin Dixon (b. 1950) and Elizabeth Alexander (b. 1962) also help to freshen up the collection. Sadly, what vivacity these poems retain is sucked dry by Barbour’s monotonous successions of sad, big-eyed faces and drably colored collages. Well-intentioned, and at least as valuable for its editorial additions as its lyric contents. (index) (Poetry. 10-13)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4027-1689-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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