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I AM A POETATO

Name: I AM A POETATO
Author: John Hegley
ISBN: 978-1-84780-397-9

AN A-Z OF POEMS ABOUT PEOPLE, PETS, AND OTHER CREATURES

by John Hegley ; illustrated by John Hegley ; Helen Rawlinson ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2014

Wide-ranging poems and whimsical illustrations combine to yield uneven degrees of comedic success.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY

- BOOK REVIEW
MY DOG IS A CARROT
by John Hegley & illustrated by John Hegley

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AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY

From the Poetry for Young People series

edited by Arnold Rampersad ; Marcellus Blount ; illustrated by Karen Barbour ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2013

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY

- BOOK REVIEW
POETRY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
by Langston Hughes & edited by David Roessel & Arnold Rampersad & illustrated by Benny Andrews

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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)