edited by Wendy Cooling & illustrated by Sheila Moxley ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2004
Moxley’s distant, restrained depictions of children at play strike appropriately dispiriting visual notes for this uninspired gathering of poems—billed as coming “from around the world,” though all were written in English, and over half by poets living either in England or North America. Aside from Sheila Hamanaka’s “All the Colors of the Earth,” Rabindranath Tagore’s “Paper Boats” (both previously published as solo titles for children), and a passionate screed from pseudonymous South American Teresa de Jesús—“When I see food / tossed into the garbage / and a poor man poking around in case / it isn’t rotten yet / it makes me furious!”—the entries are largely bland, prosaic observations about trees, seasons, hair, or the sky; jump-rope rhymes; or two chestnuts from Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses. Capped by biographical notes so skimpy that two contributors aren’t even mentioned, this also-ran isn’t likely to reach readers the way James Berry’s Around the World in Eighty Poems (2002), Floella Benjamin’s Skip Across the Ocean (1995), or any number of similar offerings with an international focus have. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8234-1822-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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by James Berry ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1999
Leaving behind much of the lyricism found in his previous collections, Berry (First Palm Trees, 1997, etc.) pens poems in the voices of a sister, Dreena (who has the magical name), and brother, Delroy, on their experiences in the family with a dour sister, mother (“A teacher, Mom has lots of pens/and home and school jobs”), and father, who “drives a train,/sometimes in a heavy jacket.” This father is not really poem-material: “And, sometimes, Dad brings us gifts./Sometimes, he plays our piano.” The brother, Delroy, who tenders three autobiographical poems, can’t sit still and can’t stop talking about it. There is a good declarative poem, about a strong friendship he shares with another boy. Otherwise, he is dancing like a madman (“doing body-break and body-pop”) or skateboarding under the influence of a fevered imagination (“I want one owl on each my shoulder/hooting out as I leap each river”). In her first book, Hehenberger takes a literal route, anchoring every poem in domestic scenes of family and friends; the deep colors and finely sculpted forms become set pieces for Berry’s earthbound images. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-80013-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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by David T. Greenberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1999
Some silly variations on the fates of familiar nursery rhyme characters add cheap laughs to traditional Mother Goose tales. Greenberg proposes that after Humpty’s great fall, he almost became a giant omelet, but was accidentally splattered on the kitchen wall instead. Mother Goose and her gander “both went/up to heaven/After colliding with a/747!” Peter Pumpkin Eater’s wife gets her revenge by sticking her husband in a loaf of bread. Sending up Mother Goose can be rewarding, but it’s never easy; the author, with little of the grace or beat of the originals, twists many tales with trendy, explicitly gross humor, e.g., Jack Spratt and his wife lick not only the platter clean, but a city bus, the dog’s nose, and a garbage truck. The illustrations, despite their giddiness, have a decidedly old-fashioned feel, demonstrating Schindler’s facility with nursery rhyme characterizations in finely inked cross-hatchings. (Picture book. 4-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-316-32767-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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