A bubbly and educational bilingual poetry anthology for children.
Occasions big and small are celebrated with kid-friendly poems in this English/Spanish anthology compiled by Vardell and Wong (The Poetry Anthology for Science, 2014, etc.).
The latest in the Poetry Friday Anthology brings together classroom poems for nearly every day of the year and seemingly every occasion under the sun. The lighthearted collection, which is aimed at students between kindergarten and fifth grade, includes 156 poems written in English by 115 poets, with Common Core State Standards and Texas educational standards in mind. In addition to birthdays and well-known religious holidays—Christmas, Passover, Ramadan, etc.—the poetry marks national traditions such as Thanksgiving and Groundhog Day as well as more obscure dates on the calendar like National Hat Day, Band-Aid Day, and International Dinosaur Month. The anthology looks beyond the United States to educate students about festivals throughout the world, too, such as Nepal’s Dashain and Japan’s Obon. It also celebrates diversity at home, with poems observing holidays such as Gay Pride Day, Arab American Heritage Month, and National Blended Family Day. Each poem is accompanied by its Spanish translation, an important addition given that Spanish is the most spoken non-English language in the U.S., not to mention the wide range of benefits learning a foreign language can have on the developing brain. The translations might, perhaps unintentionally, also serve as a minilesson in the notorious difficulty of moving poetry from one language into another: rhymes and rhythms in the original are oftentimes missing in the Spanish, and in a collection of punchy children’s verse, the lack of musicality is noticeable. In general, the poems are didactic in content, but scattered among the straightforward fare are several more whimsical compositions that might elicit a chuckle or two from parents helping their little ones with homework. “Picky Eater” by Matt Forrest Esenwine particularly stands out for its Seussian style: “but please don’t give me / Sugar Smacks, / or stars or squares or flakes / you’ve found— / I only eat, you see, / what’s round.”
A bubbly and educational bilingual poetry anthology for children.Pub Date: March 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1937057411
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Pomelo Books
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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