In this spirited collaboration, Salas and López present 24 suggestive poetic snapshots chronicling the cycle of a year.
Highlighting season-appropriate objects for spring, fall, summer, and winter, Salas magnifies the spareness of the haiku form by turning each concentrated first-person portrait into a riddle as she tantalizingly omits naming the subject describing itself. Meanwhile López offers young and pre-readers florid visual hints, depicting in deft brush strokes and lush colors the author’s hidden subjects. Combined, these artists render objects gentle as summer’s fireflies (“fire in our bellies / we FLICKER-FLASH in twilight— / rich meadow of stars”) or winter’s snowflakes (“I’m cold confetti / falling from a crystal sky, / blanketing the town,” here shown as a white-roofed town in a snow globe painted against a wintry verdigris sky spackled with haphazard white blots) or bold as a fall jack-o’-lantern (“I perch on the porch, / spooky face frozen in place, / fire BURNING inside”—glowering large with flaming orange eyes as the finger of a ghostly trick-or-treater rings the doorbell in the background). What sets this volume apart from similar haiku explorations of the seasons is the tight synthesis of visual object and oblique verbal depiction, making for both wonderfully contemplative experiences of each illustrated poem and the seamless progression of nature’s cycle through the year.
Richly rewarding and clever: a visually arresting, inventive treatment of a popular subject. (Picture book/poetry. 5-10)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5124-9809-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY | CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Why not? Because “IT’S FULL OF GERMS.”
Of course, Ben-Barak rightly notes, so is everything else—from your socks to the top of Mount Everest. Just to demonstrate, he invites readers to undertake an exploratory adventure (only partly imaginary): First touch a certain seemingly blank spot on the page to pick up a microbe named Min, then in turn touch teeth, shirt, and navel to pick up Rae, Dennis, and Jake. In the process, readers watch crews of other microbes digging cavities (“Hey kid, brush your teeth less”), spreading “lovely filth,” and chowing down on huge rafts of dead skin. For the illustrations, Frost places dialogue balloons and small googly-eyed cartoon blobs of diverse shape and color onto Rundgren’s photographs, taken using a scanning electron microscope, of the fantastically rugged surfaces of seemingly smooth paper, a tooth, textile fibers, and the jumbled crevasses in a belly button. The tour concludes with more formal introductions and profiles for Min and the others: E. coli, Streptococcus, Aspergillus niger, and Corynebacteria. “Where will you take Min tomorrow?” the author asks teasingly. Maybe the nearest bar of soap.
Science at its best: informative and gross. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-17536-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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Both technique and imaginative impulse can be found in this useful selection of poems about the literary art.
Starting with the essentials of the English language, the letters of “Our Alphabet,” the collection moves through 21 other poems of different types, meters, and rhyme schemes. This anthology has clear classroom applications, but it will also be enjoyed by individual readers who can pore carefully over playful illustrations filled with diverse children, butterflies, flowers, books, and pieces of writing. Tackling various parts of the writing process, from “How To Begin” through “Revision Is” to “Final Edit,” the poems also touch on some reasons for writing, like “Thank You Notes” and “Writing About Reading.” Some of the poems are funny, as in the quirky, four-line “If I Were an Octopus”: “I’d grab eight pencils. / All identical. / I’d fill eight notebooks. / One per tentacle.” An amusing undersea scene dominated by a smiling, orangy octopus fills this double-page spread. Some of the poems are more focused (and less lyrical) than others, such as “Final Edit” with its ending stanzas: “I check once more to guarantee / all is flawless as can be. / Careless errors will discredit / my hard work. / That’s why I edit. / But I don’t like it. / There I said it.” At least the poet tries for a little humor in those final lines.
Here’s hoping this will inspire many children to joyfully engage in writing. (Picture book/poetry. 7-10)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68437-362-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY
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