Fyleman, best known in the US for her poem “A Fairy Went A-Marketing,” was a well-known children’s writer and editor in England in the first decades of the 20th century. This volume of her original nursery rhymes includes 20 of her rhyming poems taken from a larger collection published in 1931. Included is her widely anthologized poem about mice, as well as short, humorous rhymes about farm animals and colorful characters such as Mary Middling, Lanky Lawrence, and a purple-clad witch who drinks “vinegar, blacking, and good red ink” (labeled as poison in the illustration) while she flies. Several of the rhymes have some British vocabulary (marmalade, treacle, washing peg) or rhyming pairs requiring British pronunciation that will be puzzling to children without adult interpretation. The heavily outlined illustrations have a flat, naïve style suited to old-fashioned nursery rhymes, with cobblestone streets, aproned farm girls, and tidy villages. All in all, the rhymes aren’t particularly funny or memorable—a middling sort of collection in a crowded genre. (Picture book. 2-5)
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2004
ISBN: 0-618-38141-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
Energetic woodcuts accompany playfully simple poems as they give young readers an engaging tour of the barnyard. From the usual suspects—rooster, cow, sheep—to some of the less celebrated denizens of the farm—snake, bees, turtle—each poem varies to suit its subject. The barn cat’s verse is succinct: “Mice / had better / think twice.” The snake’s winds its way down the page in sinuous shape. At their best, Elliott’s images are unexpected and all the more lovely: The turtle “Lifts her fossil head / and blinks / one, two, three / times in the awful light.” Others are not so successful, but Meade’s illustrations give them credence: The rooster “Crows and struts. / He’s got feathers! / He’s got guts!” This rhythmic but rather opaque assertion is accompanied by an oversized rooster who dominates the foreground; eyes shut in concentration, he levitates himself with the force of his crow—the very embodiment of “guts.” Farmyard books are a dime a dozen, but this one is a worthwhile addition, for those poems that reach beyond the ordinary and for the good-natured illustrations that complement them. (Picture book/poetry. 2-5)
Pub Date: March 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7636-3322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008
Amiable if slight.
In a text that can be sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” a young dinosaur plays with other prehistoric friends and gets ready for bed.
In this companion piece to Twinkle, Twinkle Unicorn (2019), each double-page spread features a friendly, green theropod with rosy cheeks watching pink pterosaurs fly, using a sauropod’s tail as a sliding board, and watching volcanoes explode in the night sky. As the sun sets, the dinosaur yawns and heads back home to two larger dinosaurs, one pink with eyelashes and one blue without, who appear to be mama and papa dinosaur respectively (did color stereotyping based on gender exist 65 million years ago? And why isn’t the protagonist dinosaur mauve?). Waring has arguably created the most benign and affable dinosaurs possible, with their perpetual smiles, rounded horns and teeth, oversized eyes, and brightly colored hides. Weighing in at only a slight 16 pages, the book runs through two modified verses of the classic, and the first scans quite fluidly. The second stanza feels a little forced to make it fit into the bedtime theme: “Twinkle, twinkle dinosaur, / the day is done. / It’s time to snore.”
Amiable if slight. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: May 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3975-7
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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