THE BIRD BOOK
By
Like The Cat Book (KR, 1973), The Frog Book (KR, 1972) and the others, this is a thin and motley compilation of nineteen appallingly undistinguished pictures by as many artists and a few more short, skimmable folktales and poems. The general level of the poems -- by Emerson, Coleridge, Blake, Mother Goose and others -- is a cut above that of Shaw's other collections, but the selections are familiar enough (Kenneth Grahame's ""Duck's Ditty"" and Tennyson's ""The Eagle"" most obviously so) to make their appearance here superfluous.