Care and research are evident throughout this poignant book, which is much more than its subtitle, “Poems of the Sea”; in...
A collection of illustrated poems explores human travel across oceans through history.
Poems by 12 different poets explore, from the 15th century up to the present, human travels on the “blue road”—the oceans. Spanning Columbus’ voyage to “a new world” and the refugee crisis of the 21st century, and including the middle passage slave trade, Jewish Holocaust refugees, the Titanic, the Mariel boatlift, and the Irish Potato Famine migration, along with many others, the poems tell stories that are beautiful, sad, thought-provoking, and necessary. The full-bleed illustrations—drawings based on archival images and finished with some digital manipulation—aim to be the “visual equivalent” rather than “literal illustration” of the poems, but some are more successful than others—in particular the stark, vulnerable image that accompanies Jane Yolen’s twinned poems about the Jewish refugee ship St. Louis. Many illustrations offer the same full-bleed dark blue palette, which, through repetition, becomes numbing rather than evocative. Historical notes, such as a statement on the devastating effect of Columbus’ legacy of exploitation of the native inhabitants of the Caribbean, are relayed in the book’s backmatter, which also includes short bios on the poets and, interestingly, the typefaces used.
Care and research are evident throughout this poignant book, which is much more than its subtitle, “Poems of the Sea”; in essence and in sum, it is a history of inhumanity. (Picture book/poetry. 8-14)Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63322-276-2
Page Count: 35
Publisher: Seagrass/Quarto
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
The emphasis is more on funny than scary in this slim collection, though a few individual poems may give pause. Stella Michel’s mummy mourns the waste of good ingredients: “Fruit bat wings with Hollandaise, / eyeballs in a demi-glaze” don’t do much good for a monster with no stomach. Edna Cabcabin Moran’s zombie kid tries to catch a baseball, but the impact takes his hand off with the mitt. But in “The Witching Hour,” by Angela McMullen, an unnamed protagonist lies sleepless, hoping to survive till morning, and Wynkoop’s wishing well delivers an “eyeless beast with jagged teeth... / To search for frightened children with its heightened sense of smell.” Co-anthologist Judd is also well-represented here, with a bat-shaped concrete poem among others. While there are chills and chuckles both among these verses, they are mild ones—an additional purchase. (Poetry. 8-12)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7614-5655-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
Awash in mighty squalls, tales of heroism and melodramatic chapter headings like “The Lady Elgin: Death in the Darkness,” these marine yarns recount the violent ends of nine of the more than 6,000 ships that have “left the bottoms of Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior…littered with their wreckage and the bones of the people who sailed on them” over the past four centuries. For added value, Butts heads each shipwreck chapter with a photo or image of the unfortunate vessel. He then closes with so many Great Lakes monster sightings that they take on an aura of authenticity just by their very number, an effect aided and abetted by his liberal use of primary sources. Younger readers who might get bogged down in Michael Varhola’s more thorough Shipwrecks and Lost Treasures: Great Lakes (2008)—or turned off by its invented dialogue and embroidered details—will find these robust historical accounts more digestible and at least as engrossing. The bibliography is dominated by Canadian sources, as befitting the book’s origin, but there's plenty here to interest American readers. (Nonfiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-77049-206-6
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
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