A delightful poetry anthology that readers of all ages will enjoy.
A collection offers poetry and coloring pages for children, parents, and educators.
This anthology showcases the talents of 15 writers as they wax poetic across the animal kingdom, from birds, fish, and bears to dogs, cats, and farm animals. These rhyming poems are simple and concise yet crafted to appeal to young readers. “Come with me, / I’m bluebird free! / With azure wings, / I’m feathered glee,” writes Margaret Simon. Other winged creatures featured include an itchy ostrich, a robin redbreast with a song to share, and a busy penguin. Dean Flowerfield’s imagination runs wild about different kinds of sea life while staring into a goldfish bowl. Turtles and gators “bump bounce boogie” on a log. A mother turtle “lays a clutch / Of moon-shaped eggs” on the shore before returning to the water. Editor Street explores the seasonal behavior of foxes, while Michelle Kogan zeroes in on the autumnal patterns of rabbits. A black bear takes a meandering walk through a cityscape in a poem by Debra Friedland Katz, while a slobbery dog named Mr. Jaws takes an elevator ride in a piece by Adrian Fogelin. Honeybees, monarch butterflies, spiders, and other insects get their due, too. The poems are interspersed with coloring pages that correspond to the pieces. The book also includes pages for readers to write their own poems and draw their own illustrations. The collection’s poems are playful and fun to read, as when Fogelin describes “the click of hard toenails, the damp of a snout, / the flump of butts furry, the breath tinged with trout” of “The Bears on the Stairs.” The poets also get creative with fonts and formatting. In addition to learning about animals, readers are exposed to different forms of poetry, like haiku, acrostic, and triolet. A few animals, like an okapi (a relative of the giraffe), may be unfamiliar to many readers, and some of the language, like Kogan’s description of sloths as “three-toed pygmies” that are “critically endangered,” may go over kids’ heads or require explanation.
A delightful poetry anthology that readers of all ages will enjoy.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781947536142
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Turtle Cove Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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