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FIREFLY JULY

Name: FIREFLY JULY
Author: Paul B. Janeczko
ISBN: 978-0-7636-4842-8

A YEAR OF VERY SHORT POEMS

edited by Paul B. Janeczko ; illustrated by Melissa Sweet ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 11, 2014

Scintillating! (permissions, acknowledgments) (Picture book/poetry. 4-8)

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Choosing from works spanning three centuries, Janeczko artfully arranges 36 elegant poems among the four seasons.

With each poem’s relationship to its season often subtle or tangential, Janeczko avoids the trite repetition flawing some seasonal poetry collections. The initial poem, by Cid Corman for “Spring,” lauds a dawn scene: “Daybreak reminds us— / the hills have arrived just in / time to celebrate.” Emily Dickinson’s poem shimmers in the “Summer” section: “The Moon was but a Chin of Gold / A Night or two ago —/ And now she turns Her perfect Face / Upon the World below….” (The moon’s presence shines throughout, in eight poems.) Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser, whose published 2003 collaboration is represented by two poems, offer this autumnal musing: “What is it the wind has lost / that she keeps looking for / under each leaf?” The winter poems are snowy, but they are also laced with fog; nature scenes alternate with depictions of a subway, a rusting truck, harbor boats and more. Sweet’s effervescent mixed-media collages include signature elements like graph paper and saturated pinks; the large format engenders some expansive compositions, such as one showing the curve of the Earth near an enormous, smiling full moon. Inventive details abound, too: The last spread shows a child asleep under a crazy quilt that incorporates motifs from all four seasons—a perfect visual ending.

Scintillating! (permissions, acknowledgments) (Picture book/poetry. 4-8)

Pub Date: March 11, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-7636-4842-8

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY

- BOOK REVIEW
WHERE I LIVE
edited by Paul B. Janeczko ; illustrated by Hyewon Yum

- BOOK REVIEW
SECRET SOLDIERS
by Paul B. Janeczko

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PROPER WAY TO MEET A HEDGEHOG
edited by Paul B. Janeczko ; illustrated by Richard Jones

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MEAL OF THE STARS

POEMS UP AND DOWN

by Dana Jensen & illustrated by Tricia Tusa ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 20, 2012

Ambitious but flawed.

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Jensen’s debut yields 15 skinny poems, 10 of which are meant to be read from bottom to top.

The untitled poems’ subjects range from the lofty—stars and rockets—to the mundane—a winter jacket’s zipper, a ladybug’s hike up a dandelion stem. Each line consists of just one word. Neither punctuation nor capitalization appears, rendering natural breaks tricky to discern. A waterfall poem reads “roaring / crashing / sparkling / and / white / oh / what / a / thunder / heaving / its / mighty / heart / the / waterfall / splashes / out / its / lovely / blue / music / on / the / slippery / rocks / below.” Poems soar, as in one about a kite, but they can also fall a bit flat, without rising from reportage to evocative engagement. Tusa’s quirky watercolor-and-ink illustrations invite browsing; black-and-white vignettes alternate with full-color pages. Rather than visually extending the poems, the pictures seem catapulted beyond them: A simple verse narrating an elevator ride appears against a double-page spread showing the narrator in a penthouse with a rooftop pool, a deck with a swing and a bike, an open-air bedroom and fruit trees. The choice to depict successive children throughout rather than to visually capture a consistent narrator seems a missed opportunity in a title that could have profited from more cohesion.

Ambitious but flawed. (Picture book/poetry. 4-7)

Pub Date: March 20, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-547-39007-9

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY

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UNDER THE SILVER MOON

LULLABIES, NIGHT SONGS & POEMS

illustrated by Pamela Dalton ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 2017

Effectively soporific, though less broadly diverse in culture than casting.

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Intricate cut-paper borders and figures accompany a set of sleepy-time lyrics and traditional rhymes.

Aside from “All the Pretty Little Ponies,” which is identified as “possibly African American,” the selections are a mostly Eurocentric sampling. It’s a mix of familiar anonymous rhymes (“Oh, how lovely is the evening,” “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, / Bless this bed that I lie on”) and verses from known authors, including Jane Taylor’s “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” (first verse only), Robert Louis Stevenson’s “My Bed is a Boat,” and Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Seal’s Lullaby.” Melodramatic lullabies such as “Rockabye Baby” have been excluded in favor of more pacifistic poems, and in keeping with the cozy tone (though she does show one cat looming hungrily over a mouse hole), Dalton enfolds each entry in delicately detailed sprays of leaves or waves, graceful garlands of flowers, flights of butterflies, and tidy arrangements of natural or domestic items, all set against black or dark backgrounds that intensify the soft colors. A parade of young people—clad in nightclothes and diverse of facial features, hair color and texture, and skin hue—follow a childlike, white angel on the endpapers and pose drowsily throughout.

Effectively soporific, though less broadly diverse in culture than casting. (Picture book/poetry. 6-8)