IN THE SPIN OF THINGS

In this collection, a wide variety of mostly everyday items are described in terms of their motion. Cereal, scissors, and rubber bands, as well as carousels, waterfalls, and helicopters are examined and described visually and aurally. The reader is presented with vivid visual images, but it is the sounds that the objects make as they move that give life to the poems. The wind chimes are “tin ballerinas on a tangle of string,” but they are also “sweet voices of chattering ghosts.” Ice cubes plop and make a “crackling, clinking chime” as we “watch them bounce and belly flop.” Most of the poems are on a single illustrated page and there are a few double-page spreads. Dugan selects just the right perspective to spotlight each subject’s motion. Colors are bright without being garish and there’s a sense of joy throughout. A different way of viewing the world around us. (Poetry. 6-10)