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Cats have fascinated humans for thousands of years. Their enigmatic smiles, their tendency to snub their humans for any minor slight, their expressions of deep knowledge and understanding. What is he thinking? is something a cat owner often considers.
The little girl hero of Caroline Lazo's Someday When My Cat Can Talk has some ideas about her cat's inner intellectual life. Her cat, she thinks, has a tale to tell about a trip abroad: "He'll tell me how he hopped a ship/and where he stowed away./He'll cheer the wind that blew his fur/as he sailed beyond the bay."
The little girl's cat travels all about Europe--from England to France to Spain and Italy. And Lazo's rhyming text conveys a sense of fun and humor throughout the tale. Take this stanza, for example:
He'll speak fondly of the snail he met while camping out near Cannes. And he'll whisper why she's hiding from the chef at Cafe Sands.
The cat comes home to the little girl, who imagines he'll tell her stories about his European travels. But the cat, alas, is a cat in the end and the little girl and the reader is left to guess about his adventures: My cat will tell me all these things/when he talks to me someday./Until then, when the sun goes down,/he always sneaks away.
Kyrsten Brooker's paintings--in a warm palette of dark greens, reds, blues, and browns--merge an impressionist style (a la Cezanne, in this case) with touches of collage. Their quirky, but approachable, style works beautifully with Lazo's rhyming text.
Pack your bags! Let's follow that cat this Poetry Friday.
Ah, joy of silly joys! What's more fun that curling up with a wiggledy-piggledy toddler and dazzling her with colors and rhymes that zing. She might even sit still for the whole book (I can dream, can't I?)
The wildly popular Ehlert doesn't need my help selling books (though I'm always happy to take a tiny commission should you order via the box above). Her latest features several familiar feathered, finned or furry friends per page, from the ever-popular penguins to a not-too-scary wolf.
Her cut-paper creations in vivid primary colors are a wonder to behold, as bold, geometric shapes come together as various animals, and who knew that hole punches and pinking shears could be put to such artsy uses. The poems also leap out for their cleverness and simplicity that should keep parents as amused as kiddies.
Here's a small sampling:
CHICKEN If a chicken crossed the road and rampled, would the eggs she laid be scrambled?
CATERPILLAR A caterpillar's future plan includes a butterfly wingspan
I particularly liked CATERPILLAR, as it forms the end papers, with numerous geometric caterpillars looking like gear parts from a mechanical drawing.
And there are several along the lines of CAT, which use the most obvious rhymes and still manage to sound fresh:
A quick rewind: it's Shel Silverstein's first poetry collection and the only one with color illustrations, which HarperCollins is reissuing. It's a classic, full of jottings and doodles of a mad menagerie of made-up monsters, and doesn't need a review from me. Just thought you'd like a little sample, is all.
But about that personal connection. I'm on a diet. I empathize with some of these hungry monsters. Though I'd rather have a few cookies or a slice of pizza than a little kid, thanks. Too bony for me. (though I do tell my kids they're scrumptious ...)
The Bibely
The Bibely's habits are rather crude He shuns all ordinary food And rather enjoys Girls and boys. So when you sense him drawing near Pour some ketchup in your ear And pretend you're a roast Or a poached egg on toast Or a small piece of blueberry pie-- And maybe he'll walk right by.
Animal Poems
Written by Valerie Worth; illustrated by Steve Jenkins Farrar, Strauss & Giroux
reviewed by Ilene Goldman
The multimedia porcupine on the front of Animal Poems is actually cuddly-looking, inviting the reader into this collection of poetry with his direct gaze and slight smile. Each illustration begs us to turn the page to find the collage Jenkins has concocted for the next poem. A penguin with pitch black feathers waddles on homemade ice-paper; an elephant whose wrinkled skin looks like crumpled, ironed paper trundles across a page; and a fuzzy-legged spider weaves her delicate web. You’ll look again and again.
The late Valerie Worth’s poems are as deep and resonant as the images, but not as fanciful. This is a collection of free verse, not rhyming poetry; Worth's words evoke the essence of each animal without anthropomorphizing or imparting endearing traits.
We understand the dichotomy between a bear’s sweet looks and fearsome personality: “The bear’s fur / Is gentle but / His eye is not: / It burns our /Way, while / He walks right /” We hear right away that the bear on this page is not our teddy bear, not cuddly, not the bear of countless toddlers’ tales.
We feel the snake slithering, “Loosed / From / Limbs to / Run like / Water, /”. And we want to fly with the wren “As though a stray / Leaf, fluttering over / The Grass…”
I generally indulge in picture books for the littlest reader, my 2-year old daughter, and I’ve often wondered how a picture book for older readers might fulfill educational needs and yet not feel like it is babying the reader. Animal Poems answered my questions. Free verse lacks the meter or rhyme of other kinds of poetry, achieving its lyricism in precise word choice and cadenced word flow. For a middle school reader, it is hard to access precisely because it is so different from the understood paradigm. Combined with Jenkins’ unique illustrations, Worth’s sparse yet suggestive poems more than speak for themselves.
I had some minor qualms which may reveal my shallow understanding of the classification of the animal world: Are snail and spiders animals or insects? Ultimately, I suppose it doesn’t matter: All Charlotte wants to do is look at the bear and the bat. I think she’ll be trying to make cut-paper collages any minute now!
Rating: *\*\*\
This book was a Cybils finalist. Check the full list here.
Prelutsky's tenure as the nation's first Children's Poet Laureate ends in May, when the Poetry Foundation announces his successor (no, I have no idea who's in the running). Publishers have been eager to cash in on the foundation's imprimatur and they'd slap a gold sticker on anything with his name on it, which isn't entirely Prelutsky's fault, even if I've chided him on this blog for it.
Fortunately, his career blazes on, and he has another collection of poems out before he goes back to merely being the performer with a thousand funny voices and the creator of rampantly silly stanzas.
As usual, his best verses are those with a punchline or some sort of payoff:
I crossed a lion with a mouse. Their progeny patrol my house, and often roar, demanding cheese-- I give them all the cheese they please.
And he's at his worst when trying to sneak a message in, as he does with a plodding paean to schoolwork in "Homework, Sweet Homework":
My friends think I'm loony to take such delight in homework, sweet homework-- they're probably right.
He also adds several concrete poems, with an understated assist from illustrator James Stevenson, as in the vertiginous "I am Climbing up a Ladder" that reads from bottom to top.
I'll leave you with one of my favorites, "A Turtle," partly because it's a prime example of how he uses adult words for comic effect, but mostly for its Zen-like resolution:
A turtle never feels the need to ambulate at breakneck speed. Of course, unsuited for the deed, it certainly would not succeed.
Because a turtle takes its time, its life is quietly sublime. It's happy in its habitat ... there's something to be said for that.
God Bless the Child By Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr.; illustrated by Jerry Pinkney Amistad/HarperCollins
Oooh ... tingles. Pair a classic song by legendary Billie Holiday with the illustrator's fascination with the Great Migration, and you've got one powerful depiction of an amazing era in African American history.
Pinkney's watercolors capture every detail in a subdued palette that brims with diffused light. You can make out the grains on wood and the hope on faces as sharecropping families leave the South behind and eke out a better existence in northern cities.
That things didn't work out so well for so many isn't dealt with here, where we're still on the cusp of something new and great. The full-bleed illustrations dwell on intimate family scenes or the sweep of cityscapes, with the storytelling left to the readers. Holiday and Herzog's lyrics suggest the fickleness of fortune; Pinkney's art picks up on its more redemptive notes.
Money, you got lots o' friends, Crowdin' round the door, When you're gone and spendin' ends, They don't come no more.
Rich relations give, Crust of bread and such, You can help yourself, But don't take too much!
Mama may have, Papa may have, But God bless the child That's got his own! That's got his own.
A Poet's Bird Garden by Laura Nyman Montenegro Farrar, Strauss & Giroux
I had the pleasure of meeting Laura at our very first kidlitosphere contest back in October, where we had an eye-opening chat about what it's like to be both author and illustrator.
I envied her ability to see a book from the first sparkle of inspiration through the many drafts of verses to the final jot of color, knowing that every comma and brush stroke flows solely and completely from her vision.
I took home a copy of this book but somehow didn't get to review it until now, when its bright cover and amusing premise reminded me of my long-ago promise to review it.
In it, a girl opens the door to her pet bird Chirpie's cage, and it flies into a tree. Whoops. Time to call--well, a bunch of poets. Who else? Poets do seem to inspire loopy logic, as in this book from France.
The Poets try to lure the bird back with yoga poses or bird songs, finally deciding to create a serene, bird-friendly "poet garden"--but will Chirpie take the bait?
We must try to imagine the mind of the bird, complex and quick-witted, quite brilliant, I've heard.
If I were Chirpie fancy and free, what beauty would beckon me down from the tree?
Laura states on the back flap she drew inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh's The Poet's Garden (there's even a character named Vincent), but her palette is mostly subdued and warm, though borrowing perhaps more from Matisse with his tilted picture planes and love of patterns and texture.
The poets are a nice mix of ethnicities, without drawing attention to that fact. She uses rhyme and meter when it suits the narrative, though not always consistently, and most often breaking free when Chirpie remains stubbornly up her tree (perhaps symbolically?).
Oh, Brother! By Nikki Grimes; illustrated by Mike Benny
Greenwillow
One of the most powerful poetic storytellers has done it again. With a few keystrokes, a rhyme here and there, she's woven a moving story of how two very different boys become brothers in more than name.
We don't learn the narrator's name--Xavier--until late in this collection, but we do get plenty of his opinions about his mother's remarriage. He loves his new Dad, but not the boy, Chris, who comes as extra baggage, getting in the way, acting all perfect, taking up space, throwing his small family off balance:
STEPS Everyone in this house is a step, now. Stepmom. Stepdad. Stepson. Stepbrother.
In my mind, I turn them into steps I can climb And when I reach the top, I rule.
Several of the poems are told in rhyme, others are simple, quick dabs of free verse, meant to convey a fleeting emotion. Few kids' poets are as adept as Grimes in exploring their emotions with such range and empathy, and in so few words.
At last, the two boys have their breakthrough, and if you're not crying as their bond strengthens, you're probably dead. And when we do learn the narrator's name, as Chris practices writing it, Grimes creates a magical moment for Xavier to grow. She respects her character enough to know he probably has a tough time expressing emotions, and instead gives us his actions:
I swipe his pen and write H-E-R-M-A-N-O "Huh?"Chris can be slow. "It means brother," I say. "That's my name now, one you already know how to spell."
We know immediately what's going on in Xavier's head, because Grimes respects our intelligence too.
Benny's illustrations follow through on Grimes' many hints that this is a multiracial family--Latino and African-American--but this could be any boy's blended family today. Kids have a tendency to recover, to patch together a new life and a mended heart. Grimes takes us there, until we want to adopt this new family and make it our own.
Chess Rumble by G. Neri; illustrated by Jesse Joshua Watson
Lee & Low Books
Is this a poem or a story or a dramatic monologue? I love genre benders, and this gripping, dark look at an urban African-American kid's anger and confusion defies pigeonholing. It's nominated under Middle Grade novels for a Cybils award, where I'm hoping it doesn't get buried by more traditional fare.
The 11-year-old narrator, who goes by Hulk or Fattie, depending on whether you're friend or foe, wields free verse like a blunt stick, now tapping out a rhythm, now beating us freely with rapid images, impressions and raw action from his damaged life. This is one kid on the edge, and the abyss is a single misstep away.
I wanna say I'm not a angry guy, that I'm not the one she gotta worry 'bout. But I can see in the way she look at me that she don't believe I will turn it around.
When an exasperated teacher sends him to the library, he encounters the mysterious CM, a tattooed warrior who wields a mean chess board. Average game: three moves. When he challenges Hulk to beat him, we sense a temblor building beneath the boy's fragile fault lines.
Where it leads and how we get there is for you to discover. It reads quickly, but this is one story that lingers long after the covers are closed.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth; illustrated by Sami Suomalainen
Lobster Press
This whimsical treatment of Wordsworth's poem by a Finnish illustrator for a Canadian publisher--now making its way to us Yanks--is a testament to the enduring and universal power of the poet's imagery.
Suomalainen dedicates the book to "the power of flowers" and creates a candy-striped robot who wheels out of a gray, oily, surreally mechanized city:
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils;
The daffodils cavort and lift our robot narrator out of his gloom. Stripes of amber and green on the daffodils' petals and stems echo the robot's patterns, and soon the mechanical becomes organic and vice-versa, with a little of each in the other.
The city's conveyor belt streets come alive with giant, dancing flowers and the other androids take on more vibrant hues, as if showing how flowers can pretty much perk up the gloomiest cityscape.
I agree, and had a lot of fun with this quirky pairing of a Romantic pen with a Modernist brush.
Today at the Bluebird Café: A Branchful of Birds
Written by Deborah Ruddell; Illustrated by Joan Rankin
McElderry Books
Reviewed by Ilene Goldman
From the frontispiece, this book made me smile. Rankin’s whimsical illustrations of laughing children swung by trapeze ropes held by birds foreshadows the imagination and lyricism captured in Ruddell’s poems.
Each poem in this collection tells us something about the bird for which it is named.
“The Loon’s Laugh” focuses on the loon’s unique song while “The Cardinal” finds more “red” words than I can think of quickly. “The Woodpecker” asks us to put ourselves in his shoes: “If you think that his life is a picnic, / a seesawing day at the park, / I ask you just once to consider/ the aftertaste / of bark.
I’ve tried to pick a favorite poem in this collection, but I just can’t. How can you choose between a vulture who lectures on table manners and “Blue Jay Blues,” which begins with this startling description: “Blue as a bruise on a swollen knee”?
Beyond the striking juxtaposition of words to elicit movement, sounds, and colors, the strength of these poems lies in the variation of rhythm and meter from poem to poem. Trilling rhymes echo the loon’s laugh, “No tweedle-dee-dee on your windowsill. / No sunshiny tune from the top of a hill. / No chirp. No coo. No warble or cheep. / No bubbly twitter or sweet little peep.”
Loftier, gentler rhymes fly with the Eagle: “She rides like she owns the sun, on a sea of air and light— / surfing, skimming, rising high, / then sweeping low and tight.”
Ruddell’s poems are complemented by Rankin’s lovely watercolor paintings, at once whimsical and realistic. She illustrates the stories told by the poems, adding fancy to flight, if you’ll forgive the backwards pun.
I end with a confession and an aspiration. The confession: I recently had the opportunity to hear Deborah Ruddell and her editor Karen Wojtyla speak about the publication of Today at the Bluebird Café. I was particularly interested to read a book whose editor declared publicly that she’d done very little editing because Ruddell’s poetry was already precise. I was not disappointed.
The aspiration: Ruddell spoke of being “old” for a first children’s book. I can only aspire to debut, at any age, with such a delightful book.
My husband is a huge Mutts fan and wouldn't let me pan a book of McDonnell's even if he were capable of writing a bad one. Though this one leans a tad toward the pedestrian, if I can avoid getting shot at for saying so. Still, if I could say as much in so little space, I'd bottle his talent, sell stock in it, and retire to my own island.
So Hug Time doesn't rate with my all-time favorite of his, The Gift of Nothing, but it's a fine little book about dispensing full-frontal, no-holds-barred hugs. I don't know all the Mutts characters (being a relative newcomer to the McDonnell orbit), but a little kitty named Jules sets off on a round-the-world trip wearing a favorite sweater and carrying a hug-to-do list.
In rhyming quattrains, he meets up with a variety of animals, more than a few on the endangered list, and gives 'em a big ol' squeeze:
Exploring the rain forest by foot and canoe, Jules discovered a species brand-new. Kneeling, he whispered, "We welcome you." Off to India--with its tigers so few, Finding one is hard to do.
Okay, so there are better rhymers out there, and McDonnell isn't above some blatant sentimentality, especially considering his famed fondness for animals (he's on the board of directors of The Humane Society of the United States, among other accomplishments).
There's no real plot here--no conflict or mounting drama or discernible character arc. Still, 'tis the season for such things, and you could do worse than put a hug in someone's stocking.
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village
by Laura Amy Schlitz; illustrated by Robert Byrd
Candlewick Press
Why I didn't order this at first: wrong age group. Too mature for my wee 'uns. Then came a flurry of emails from my colleagues at the Cybils contest: was this non-fiction or fiction? Was it poetry? Middle-grade or young adult?
Nobody knew quite where to put these 19 lyrical monologues of children's voices from the thirteenth century. Schlitz -- last year's Cybils winner in the Middle-Grade fiction genre -- had stumped some of the smartest bloggers in kidlit land.
I developed a serious jones for this genre bender and Candlewick obliged. From the cover illustration on, the tweens and teens who inhabit this fictional village have taken up residence in my imagination, where they continue to flirt and jostle, scrounge out a living, sin and repent and hunger and triumph. I imagine at their beatings, their wasted frames and matted hair and share their hard-scrabble existence through 81 brief pages, with smatterings of discreetly placed background notes.
Schlitz wrote this for students at a private school in Baltimore, where she's a librarian and historian. When she offered to write a play that truly depicted life in the Middle Ages, nobody wanted a minor part. She created 21 scenes, all but two of them for a single actor, and most of them in verse. As the characters speak, they offer an unflinching view of their poverty, their superstitions and prejudices and the limited scope of their ambitions.
We meet the Lord of the Manor's nephew, who risks his life in a boar hunt; a glassblower's apprentice determined to get it right; a shepherdess struggling to save her "sister" sheep, and many other charming, disarming and (mostly) guileless kids struggling to figure out their place in the local pecking order and how to bridge those awkward years until adulthood.
Even with so many disparate voices, there are no discordant notes. Village life emerges with its rhythms, its simplicity, and narrative threads that weave all the characters into a cohesive whole. Byrd helpfully illustrates with scenes that could've come from a Book of Hours; his approximation of Medieval illuminations are so close that I forgot I'd already seen his name on the cover and searched the extensive bibliography for the pictures' source.
Although the scenes are meant to be performed or at least read aloud by 10-15 year olds, this can also be read silently by one very absorbed kid -- or, ahem, grown-up.
An extra post for a triple celebration: International Day of Peace, Poetry Friday and Yom Kippur (which begins at sundown tonight).
We sing this in my son's school at assemblies and I cry every time. It uses both the Hebrew and Arabic words for "peace" -- shalom and salaam. See below for lyrics and translation.
OD YAVO SHALOM ALEINU
(SALAAM)
Od yavo' shalom aleinu
Od yavo' shalom aleinu
Od yavo' shalom aleinu
Ve al kulam (x2)
Salaam
Aleinu ve al kol ha olam,
Salaam, Salaam (x2)
PEACE WILL COME UPON US
Peace Will Come Upon Us
Peace Will Come Upon Us Peace Will Come Upon Us and on everyone.
Today is International Peace Day (and, incidentally, the Eve of Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest day), and this poem about war drops like jagged pieces of glass into your conscience, intensely sharp but, in the right light, shining and beautiful.
Set aside the word "never" in the title. You could make a good case for many wars in history, but we're not concerned with polemics here. Walker makes a character out of War; watchful and insidious, unconcerned and toxic:
Though War is Old It has not Become wise It will not hesitate To destroy Things that Do not Belong to it Things very Much older Than itself.
Vitale's art drives the point home, literally. Turn the page on a lovely Asian panorama and the paper becomes wrapped around a filthy wheel with its rusting hubcap. Vibrantly hued renderings of azure skies, sun-dappled fields and teeming jungles channel Henri Rousseau or perhaps Paul Gauguin with their fondness for the primitive, in this case symbolizing the pristine. Brace for these pastoral scenes erupting with smears of toxic-looking goo, rusting nails, or cracked enamel. The effect is both jarring and yet sublime; it's hard not to admire the artistry even in what's meant to be the ugliest pages.
A few references chafe: Walker mentions War seeing oil and gas in the earth, though in the entire history of human conflict, only a tiny number involved those commodities. She pulls it all off in the end, however, by admonishing the reader about War's contagious effects on us all.
Is this the best way to teach kids about war? I have no idea. My friends and I are all agreed that we'd like to put off teaching our children about the Holocaust for as long as possible, and there are no mentions of Iraq at our dinner table, nor even much about Israel and Palestine.
What you decide to teach a young child about war is, of course, entirely up to you. Walker and Vitale are merely giving you one approach, which, if it doesn't prompt nightmares, should at least inspire numerous questions.
Mrs. Biddlebox: Her Bad Day ... And What She Did About It! By Linda Smith; illustrated by Marla Frazee
Harcourt, Inc.
At last, a book with step-by-step instructions for doing away with bad days. I've had more than my fair share lately, so I empathize:
On a grubby little hill, in a dreary little funk, Mrs. Biddlebox rolled over on the wrong side of her bunk.
The morning gets appreciably more depressing, which Frazee serves up with minute, horizontal strokes of black
grease pencil over muted beiges and gray-greens for a sense of
bottomless gloom. Mrs. B. decides to rid herself of all that bad humor by cooking the whole day into a pie.
Some witchcraft's in order, which Smith keeps her verses tight and tidy, with no misplaced meter and a smooth rhyme scheme that tickles the ear. I warmed to the idea of an unrepentent witch who wants things to go her way for a change.
But wow, does that pie do the trick and Mrs. B. goes to bed under a cloudless, star-studded sky.
The standard gripe from my writing instructors and mentors over the years has been that Oates gets published too much and edited too little, thereby stealing valuable shelf space from presumably better but lesser-known authors (such as the aforementioned instructors and mentors).
Without any degree of snarkiness whatsoever -- no, really -- I lob that same grenade at the country's first Children's Poet Laureate, who seems bent on banking his new title rather than burnishing some new verses worthy of it.
I count at least five Prelutsky titles on my shelves with 2007 copyrights: Me I Am, a reprint of an older poem with new illustrations, Good Sports, which I lukewarmly reviewed here, the occasionally funny My Parents Think I'm Sleeping, which I quoted here, the plotless Wizard, and In Aunt Giraffe's Green Garden, which I may review if I can overcome couplet fatigue.
My husband figures the guy's close to retiring and is building his bank account. I'd rather finger our whole branding culture that, sadly, has nothing to do with hot irons and everything to do with the stupifying -- and stupid-making -- effects of mass marketing. Like Roger Simon in this post, I don't blame Jack for cashing in. And I took careful note of this anti-Prelutsky screed too, which basically asks, Whither Jack?
As far as I can tell -- and I'm certainly not his publicist -- Prelutsky has been criss-crossing the country doing readings, most recently at Chicago's Printer's Row bookfest. His website isn't helpful in this regard; you'd think it'd list his appearances, at least.
My problem is with sheer tonnage. As a beleaguered Andy Warhol once said, "I can't tell what's good anymore." I think I've lost the knack for discerning which of Jack's recent verses aren't stamped from the same ticklish, end-with-a-kick mold; much of it's still good and readable and fun, but he perfected his shtick a while back and damned if he's gonna change now. Like Starbucks decor, we learn to expect only comfy variations on a theme.
We're in the midst of a kidlit renaissance, with more titles published than ever. But I wonder how much of the cream rises to the surface. The Prelutsky brand is more like high fructose corn syrup; he's in everything. And you suspect the sugar rush comes rather cheaply and is probably bad for you.
I say this, of course, knowing I could be doocing myself out of a smart freelance gig at the Poetry Foundation, where I've begun editing their children's webpage. For those who don't know, the Children's Poet Laureate is their idea.
There's still much to love about Prelutsky, and much to appreciate in how he's made a career of elevating kids' poetry without aiming over their heads. That's not an easy trick, and his readings are some of the most fun you can have with your kids without getting messy.
But I find myself wanting something more from him, and I want it less.
*Off the Shelf is a new, occasional feature for whenever I have a rant-worthy topic.
The Barefoot Book of Blessings from Many Faiths and Cultures compiled by Sabrina Dearborn; illustrated by Olwyn Whelan
Whenever I was in need of a little interfaith uplift, I used to search a very cool site with prayers from around the world.
But the domain's been taken over by an evangelical site--or I've forgotten the URL. Not that an evangelical site's bad, mind you, it's just not the ecumenical smorgasbord I used to browse so raptly.
Thanks to Barefoot, I can at least offer my kids a snippet of soul-soothing reflections from different traditions. Here are two to get your weekend started right:
House Blessing Blessed is the spot, and the house, and the place, and the city, and the heart, and the mountains, and the refuge, and the cave, and the valley, and the land, and the sea, and the island, and the meadow where mention of God has been made and his praise glorified
--Bahai
Blessing for a Journey May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, The rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the Palm of his hand.
Today's ant-sized selection comes from Bugs: Poems About Creeping Things, a book no bigger than a flea circus but with Goliath beetle-sized humor.
David L. Harrison channeled Ogden Nash for this offbeat collection that's just the thing for the wiggly worms and buzzy bees in your household. Rob Shepperson's drawings add jots of squiggly fun to the verses.
Below are simply a few excerpts, not whole poems. For that, you'll have to fly, hop, crawl or skitter to the bookstore for your own copy.
From Chigger:
Since we have to have the chigger,
Let's be grateful he's not bigger.
And, in honor of the Midwest's Cicada season:
Cicacada's grumpy, red-eyed, mean, set his alarm for seventeen.
If you've ever been accused of seeing the world in black and white, you're in good company. In these 17 poems, Miller's chosen the two most-prime of all prime colors as her subject matter, and observes the play of light and dark at work in the natural world.
She writes whole odes to the a playful moon "the sun's shy sister" who sends "alabaster beams" criss-crossing a room like a tic-tac-toe board. A newborn's feet are caught forever in ink at the hospital, a comet's blurred "as if some/impish thumb/had smeared/a star/before/the night/had dried."
Miller's art also explores these themes in her monotypes, a new word to me, but it's all explained in an endnote. She smooshed slow-drying paint onto plexiglass, used wooden sticks, fingers, whatever, to create the illustration, then laid paper over the plexiglass and sealed a reverse-image onto it. Sounds complicated, but the result are many restful, placid compositions where light and dark smoothly meld into one another.
I'd give this to an older child, one whose critical thinking skills are advanced enough to relish the imagery and appreciate her descriptive prowess.
Here's a Little Poem collected by Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters; illustrated by Polly Dunbar
If you could pick 60 poems for toddlers that capture their unexpected joys, instant frustrations and non-stop escapades, you'd be a genius. You'd be Yolen, in fact, (and collaborator Fusek Peters) and the book would be this eclectic, surprising and always delightful collection that absolutely belongs on your shelf.
Unlike some other kiddie poets, ahem, Yolen's not resting on her laureates, so to speak, and she's out there collecting the best of the best for us to titter and giggle over. I'm going to completely trash a few copyrights in the hopes you'll be inspired to get your own copy.
Jill Townsend obviously has mothered at least one clothing-challenged small person. This gem of hers sounds familiar in our household:
Dressing too Quickly Too many buttons. What along zip. Velcro to fasten. Mind you don't slip. Dress more slowly. You'll fall in a minute! You've one trouser leg And two legs in it.
The poems round out a kid's day, by the way, taking us from wake-up to nighty-night, with a few themed events like a beach trip tossed in for fun. It's an easy convention for ordering the poems, but I skipped around and didn't miss a beat.
The wide mix of authors takes us from Robert Louis Stevenson to Nikki Grimes and over the territory trod smooth by such kidlit dearhearts as Margaret Wise Brown and, yes, even Jack Prelutsky.
Some of the poems are bits of whimsy, floating like petals on a sweet breeze, and others are more striking, as in this memorable snippet of free verse from Berlie Doherty:
Grandpa Grandpa's hands are as rough as Garden sacks And as warm as pockets. His skin is crushed paper round His eyes Wrapping up their secrets.
Dunbar's art occasionally channels Maurice Sendak too fawningly, but at her best the paper collage, watercolor and pencil drawings are spirited and bright.
Comets, Stars, The Moon and Mars by Douglas Florian
I honestly don't know why the WaPo didn't love this book. Elizabeth Ward drubbed the verses as having "all the verve of a mnemonic." I disagree, and not just because the publisher mistakenly sent me three copies.
Check out the charming wordplay in Saturn, for example:
Saturn's rings turn round Saturn. Its moons turn round it, too. Saturn, by turns, turns round the sun Saturning through and through.
And then there's this pithy summation of Pluto's woes:
Pluto was a planet. Pluto was admired. Pluto was a planet. Till one day it got fired.
Mnemonic? Maybe, if in the sense it'll help fix the planets and other heavenly bodies more firmly in a child's memory. But aside from a few clunkers like the Uranus one Ward cites, most of this collection sparkles.
Florian avoids the kiddie poetry cliches that drive me nuts: he varies his meter and rhyme schemes, he fiddles and diddles with meanings, his images occasionally startle, and he's playful and witty at almost every turn, but gets his facts straight.
And the art! He primed brown paper bags (how's that for recycling?) and used great swashes of wet, drippy color, and then interspersedbits of paper and stamped letters, all tied together thematically to each poem. Check out the little cut-outs too, which open windows onto different pages.
But don't be fooled; these collages only look messy and spontaneous. It's all still uncluttered and carefully composed, and rife with visual puns and playful diversions, a perfect foil to his verses.
Take the Pluto poem again--our poor, demoted pal is stamped with letters spelling rock? hard place? dog? stone? ufo? oddball? etc. I found myself resisting the urge to utterly decimate his copyright and recreate the art as giant murals in my son's space-themed bedroom.
A funny thing happened on the way to reviewing this collection. I went to Jack's poetry reading. He read only a few from Good Sports, but I had an "aha" moment nonetheless. Really, sometimes you need to hear poetry to get it.
My epiphany came when he described the poems as getting inside the head of kids as they played at a sport. So we're in the moment, when resolve meets the rubber, and the game is made or, more likely, lost.
Because none of these kids are superstars, just regular kids. The untitled poems flit between sports as different as basketball
and frisbee, told in first person as a kid tries to catch the ball or
score the goal or make the shot. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they
fail, but the real point is to keep trying, right?
In this one, I found one of the better images:
Though I like to swim, I don't swim very well. I swim like a fish That's been sick for a spell.
At first glance, I agreed with reviews this one, or the Publisher's Weekly blurb (on Amazon), which rightly point out the poet's flaws. Perhaps he should give rhyming couplets a rest; abcb gets wearisome after a few pages, and rhymes like ball ... all or won ... fun can grate on grown-up ears.
Prelutsky's at his best when giving us a kid's eye view of the action, matching meter to emotion:
I'm a gymnast, I can vault, Swing and spring And somersault.
Prelutsky's known for seeding verses with a few choice big words, like epitome or agility, to make kids jump higher or reach further for the right meaning. Most of the poems end in his signature surpise twist, with bonus points for humor:
My dunk will be spectacular-- The greatest of them all. When I grow three feet taller, I will dunk this basketball.
If Good Sports sometimesdelivers a less-than-perfect performance, Raschka's art sprints to an easy victory. They're great. Amazing, in fact. Raschka's a genius with a watercolor brush. Splash, splash and voila! A masterpiece of movement.
He even experiments with storytelling: a tiny tot grows in stop-action frames to sink the basketball into the hoop, and another page shows a shot from above. A girl's frisbee arm elongates to make the toss; a karate kick lands on the next page.
Broad, watery strokes conjure up simple scenarios, with a flat picture plane as if a child had done this on plain, white paper at home. But there's nothing childlike in how his mishmashed colors jibe and jar and pop out at us at unexpected moments.
Did I mention I got both men's John Hancock's? Raschka was at the reading too. Oh, yeah, I'm the queen. You can all bow now.
, and not just because I attended 