In a paean to trees, George and Kiesler follow up on The Great Frog Race and Other Poems (1997), with a similar specialized collection of nature poetry, loosely organized around the four seasons. An astute beholder, George resists the obvious—acorns, apples, leaves falling—for tiny, honed observations on the knotholes in a fence, a hammock that “fills the empty space between two trees,” or a jutting branch that doubles as “a tree horse” rather than a tree house. A dozen words or so are bound into small parcels; even as the contents are unwrapped, there is room for the imagination. Told from the point of view of an oak tree or a fisherman that snags a pine, this ode begs comparison to Janice May Udry’s A Tree is Nice (1955). Kiesler has lightened her textured oil palette with the new greens of leaves and maple shoots, pale cream buds, and a bright wayward kite against a winter white snow sky. Her figures, particularly faces, are deliberately abstract compared to the portraits of her main characters—trees. A lovely, often luminous, collection. (Picture book/poetry. 5-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1998
ISBN: 0-395-87611-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
A dozen familiar dinosaurs introduce themselves in verse in this uninspired, if colorful, new animal gallery from the authors of Commotion in the Ocean (2000). Smiling, usually toothily, and sporting an array of diamonds, lightning bolts, spikes and tiger stripes, the garishly colored dinosaurs make an eye-catching show, but their comments seldom measure up to their appearance: “I’m a swimming reptile, / I dive down in the sea. / And when I spot a yummy squid, / I eat it up with glee!” (“Ichthyosaurus”) Next to the likes of Kevin Crotty’s Dinosongs (2000), illustrated by Kurt Vargo, or Jack Prelutsky’s classic Tyrannosaurus Was A Beast (1988), illustrated by Arnold Lobel, there’s not much here to roar about. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-58925-044-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
Echoing Ashley Wolff’s 1988 approach to Stevenson’s poetic tribute to the power of imagination, Kirk begins with neatly drawn scenes of a child in a playroom, assembling large wooden blocks into, “A kirk and a mill and a palace beside, / And a harbor as well where my vessels may ride.” All of these acquire grand architectural details and toy-like inhabitants as the pages turn, until at last the narrator declares, “Now I have done with it, down let it go!” In a final twist, the young city-builder is shown running outside, into a well-kept residential neighborhood in which all the houses except his have been transformed into piles of blocks. Not much to choose between the two interpretations, but it’s a poem that every child should have an opportunity to know. (Picture book/poetry. 5-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-689-86964-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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