Heavy on romanticized notions of America, with some significant flaws.
A collection of 30-some poems by a variety of 19th- and early 20th-century American authors, focusing on patriotic ideals.
Loosely organizing the poems into four thematic sections, editor Van Cleave has chosen many selections embodying an idealized view of American expansion. Starting with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s adulatory account of Paul Revere’s legendary ride, the collection includes such well-known offerings as Francis Scott Key’s “Defence of Fort M’Henry” (aka our national anthem), Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and Katharine Lee Bates’ “America the Beautiful.” Stylistically, poems range from the purple verse of Arthur Chapman and Henry van Dyke to Walt Whitman’s full-throated celebrations of individual expression to the strikingly modern voices of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Carl Sandburg. Van Cleave includes Black and female poets whose work as abolitionists and in women’s suffrage infuses their poetry with ideals of equality, peace, and justice. Disappointingly, no poems consider the perspectives of Indigenous peoples, however; William Cullen Bryant’s “The Prairies” characterizes Native people as former residents of the land now traipsed by the opining narrator. Each poem includes a sidebar with an overview, a suggested activity, and a glossary of unfamiliar words, boldfaced in the poem. A glaring miscalculation here is in the illustrations. Culled from public domain and licensed sources, the poorly chosen reproductions, sometimes oddly collaged with oversized flowers, clash with each other, stylistically and thematically.
Heavy on romanticized notions of America, with some significant flaws. (poets’ biographies, websites) (Poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781638192350
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Moonshower/Bushel & Peck Books
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two.
Rollicking verses on “numerous” topics.
Returning to the theme of her Mathematickles! (2003), illustrated by Steven Salerno, Franco gathers mostly new ruminations with references to numbers or arithmetical operations. “Do numerals get out of sorts? / Do fractions get along? / Do equal signs complain and gripe / when kids get problems wrong?” Along with universal complaints, such as why 16 dirty socks go into a washing machine but only 12 clean ones come out or why there are “three months of summer / but nine months of school!" (“It must have been grown-ups / who made up / that rule!”), the poet offers a series of numerical palindromes, a phone number guessing game, a two-voice poem for performative sorts, and, to round off the set, a cozy catalog of countable routines: “It’s knowing when night falls / and darkens my bedroom, / my pup sleeps just two feet from me. / That watching the stars flicker / in the velvety sky / is my glimpse of infinity!” Tey takes each entry and runs with it, adding comically surreal scenes of appropriately frantic or settled mood, generally featuring a diverse group of children joined by grotesques that look like refugees from Hieronymous Bosch paintings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two. (Poetry/mathematical picture book. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0116-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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