Striking use of everyday images and timely themes makes this free verse collection meaningful, memorable, and accessible.
Young People’s Poet Laureate Nye explores childhood, conflict, and connectivity through over 100 of her poems, both new and classic.
In the opening section, “The Holy Land of Childhood,” she draws from her childhood and those of others, often speaking from the child’s perspective, striking notes of loneliness, fear, and playfulness. Writing was her refuge from desperately boring early readers while a school assignment to write from the perspective of a kitchen implement turned her into “a sweet sifter in time.” Sad vignettes of her childhood home sit alongside humorous memories. Personal images of war, displacement, and loss pepper the second section, “The Holy Land That Isn’t,” in which Nye focuses on her Palestinian immigrant father’s loss of his Jerusalem home, crystallized in his longing for the figs of his childhood. In a poem dedicated to the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, she pleads for peace for “every ancient space” and, in another, observes “red poppies sleep beneath / dirt and stones” beside the homes of fearful Arab and Jewish children living only “one mile apart.” The final section, “People Are the Only Holy Land,” stresses similarities between diverse peoples, invoking a vision of a world where “it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.” López's evocative art perfectly captures and enhances the mood of dreaming and yearning. Emotionally resonant and stirring, this is a must-have title.
Striking use of everyday images and timely themes makes this free verse collection meaningful, memorable, and accessible. (afterword, notes on poems) (Poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-301345-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Affecting and hopeful.
A stray dog finds her destiny amid the chaos of a Southern California wildfire.
Wombat is a small dog with stubby legs and “silly ears / that look like furry cookies”—almost impossibly cute in Bricking’s occasional pencil-style vignettes. She’s mastered the art of survival, so when a mysterious internal voice prods her to go toward the fire, she resists. “The wrong way is the right way. / The right way is the wrong way,” the voice insists. When she tells fellow stray Silas about it, he tells Wombat she’s a “destiny dog,” bound to “find their person / before their person / can find them.” Convinced, she decides to follow the mysterious instructions. Meanwhile, Henry, a boy who’s leery of dogs, loves the bats at the wildlife rehabilitation center where Mama Ro, a veterinarian, works; his Mama J is a librarian. Henry and Barnabas, a fruit bat at the center, are both uprooted by the fire, and their paths converge with Wombat’s at an emergency shelter. The third-person perspective shifts from character to character in clusters of free-verse poems that fully immerse readers in each one’s experiences in turn. This extra-concentrated delivery of Applegate’s typically spare writing proves effective, balancing terror and sadness with heart and humor. Henry has light brown skin, Mama Ro has curly black hair and brown skin, and Mama J presents white.
Affecting and hopeful. (Verse fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780063221178
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Storytide/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
