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My Blog Meander (see sidebar) continues with a brief interview over at Tracie Vaughn Zimmer's blog (she of the lovely Steady Hands)--hope you'll stop by to say to take a quick read. She also links to the wonderful teaching guide she created for Stampede.

And wish me luck! I'm off on my first official Stampede storytime today. With Dara Dokas, I'm doing an Animal Antics storytime featuring both of our animal-themed books, plus songs and activities! We're starting out with a bang at the Minnesota Zoo! If any of you are close by, would love to see you. Here are the details.

And last but not least, I'm offering an online workshop for writers of rhyming kids' poems. Go to this page and then click to read complete workshop info.

Carol's Corner has the Poetry Friday roundup today. Enjoy!

He's having a birthday, he's having it nowSo step up, Dr Seuss and take a big bow.Okay, so my rhyme is NOT as Seussical as can be, but you get the drift - today, March 2, is Dr Seuss's birthday. If he was alive today, Dr Seuss, or Theodor Suess Geisel would be 105. If you want to learn more about him, you can click here to visit the Seussville website.To celebrate the day, I am asking another of

Animals are Sleeping
by Susanne Slade; illustrated by Gary R. Phillips
Sylvan Dell Publishing

This short but sweet bedtime book sneaks in some lessons about animal habitats, showing polar bears, sloths, fish and other critters catching some zzzz's. Slade's simple verses aim for the preschool crowd with plenty of repetition and easy-breezy rhymes, and Phillips' lush illustrations almost glow, with touches of day-glo colors shimmering out amid the somnolent dark blues and greens.

The book's been vetted by a zoologist for accuracy, so there's no anthropomorphism or cutesy antics. The animals are shown as they would be in the wild. What I like is how it confers instant genius status on the reader, making you a hero to your kids, who have know way of knowing that you'd never seen a sloth sleeping, either.

The "For Creative Minds" exercises in the back reinforce lessons on what the pictured animals eat and where they sleep. But it's also fine for reading just before you tuck your human cub under the blankies too.

Rating: *\*\*\

Oodles of Animals
Lois Ehlert
Harcourt, Inc.

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:

CAT
A cat
is a purr
wrapped up
in fur.

In a word: delightful.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Flower Garden
by Eve Bunting; illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt
Harcourt, Inc.

I haven't reviewed many board books, but then I haven't encountered many as lovely and enticing as this one. A young girl and her Dad are planning a special birthday surprise for her mother in this sweet, all-too-brief story told in super-simple quatrains.

We meet the girl--and her would-be garden--in the store:

Garden in a shopping cart
Doesn't it look great?

Garden on the checkout stand
I can hardly wait.

And so it goes, until the flowers have been lugged home, repotted and perched in a window box overlooking a bustling city street. Hewitt captures expressions flawlessly in her warm, earthy acrylics, from the girl's glowing fascination to the mother's genuine surprise.

Nice, too, that the book's rugged cardboard will hold up to rough treatment from little fingers, as this may become a fast favorite. Toddlers are notorious for getting restless quickly, but the story is short and the rhymes easy, and you can point out flowers and colors to keep them engaged.

The art features an African-American family, but the appeal should quite obviously be universal. (I like how many illustrators no longer assume the default race of characters is white, but that's another topic for another day.)

Rating: *\*\*\

I'm beginning to feel a personal connection to Don't Bump the Glump!: And Other Fantasies, and not just because I attended the fancy launch party last week.

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.

My Dog May be a Genius
by Jack Prelutsky
Greenwillow

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.

Rating: *\*\*\

On Top of the Potty and other get-up-and-go songs
by Alan Katz and David Catrow
Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster)

Did you know that girls don't poop or pee? I had no idea. Here I am, trying to potty train my 2-1/2 y.o. daughter who, I can assure you, has the requisite girl parts and, as far as I can tell, produces the usual prodigious excretions.

But in 32 pages of goofy songs and illustrations, there isn't a single girl going potty. Not one. Every single child in this book shown going potty is a boy. Every child showed in need of potty time is a boy. Every song features a boy character. There are two girls in the background in a single scene, and two completely random women characters who aren't shown in any potty-related activities. Everybody else is male.

Where have the author and illustrator been for the last 2 billion years? We're past the amoeba stage, guys. We have two sexes now.

Okay, so this doesn't try to be a primer on potty training and we don't see any boy parts anyway. It's the latest in their series where they've rewritten lyrics to old kids' songs--some really old--for maximum gross-out humor. So we get "Tinkle, Tinkle on the Floor" and "On Top of the Potty" (for "On Top of Old Smokey") and the like.

Maybe the duo thinks girls are the gentler sex and don't like to mention the unmentionables. They should've been at our dentist's when Lael proudly announced, "My have vagina!" That the dentist doesn't examine that particular orifice was incidental.

I don't have the patience for authors who ignore half their intended audience, or who treat girls as mere extras. They have five books out and I see a girl on only one cover, so I doubt it's any better in Take Me Out to the Bathtub and their other books.

And the quality of the lyrics? Set your mind to it and you can rewrite just about anything for potty humor. It's not like they've cornered the market. And, yes, it'll draw the expected laughs and guffaws--mostly from my kindergartener, who no longer needs help on the subject.

Rating: *\

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?).

Rating: *\*\*\

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.

Rating: *\*\*\

Shante Keys and the New Year's Peas
by Gail Piernas-Davenport; illustrated by Marion Eldridge

Albert Whitman & Co.

Black-eyed peas, dontcha know, are an African-American tradition on New Year's Day. But Shante's grandma -- who's been cooking up a storm -- forgot all about them. Shante scurries about the neighborhood, but her neighbors have their own traditions and foods.

By the time Shante returns with those legumes, we've learned a bit about Chinese, Hindu, Scottish and Mexican celebrations. When everyone turns up with their own dishes, you can almost smell the varied spices. How come I don't get invited to potlucks like that?

Suspense builds quickly and we move at a brisk pace, thanks to Piernas-Davenport's taut rhyming couplets. It was almost over too quickly, but end notes describe some other customs around the world.

Eldridge's acrylics are cheery and upbeat, in pleasing pastel shades, adding all the right ingredients for some lighthearted fare.

Rating: *\*\*\

Jazz Baby
by Lisa Wheeler; illustrated by R. Gregory Christie

"Brother's hands tap. Sister's hands snap ..." and before you know it, the whole family's got rhythm -- and rhyme -- as the impromptu music grows and proves infectious. Even the doe-eyed, grinning baby joins in with a loud "Go, man, go!" as everyone takes turns bopping and hip-hopping with him.

Wheeler's onomatopoeia (when words simulate sounds) careens along to a syncopated beat like electrons bouncing around an atom smasher; highly charged and fast, fast, fast. Sure, you can buy heavy parenting tomes written by Ph.Ds. on the beneficial effects of music on early childhood development, or you can just watch Jazz Baby in action.

And like all teeny-weeny boppers, he reaches the end of the day and his limits, just in time for his parents to slow the tempo down and switch to some blues-y lullabies.

Christie's gouache paintings are the perfect dance partner to Wheeler's punchy verses with elongated figures who seem to sway with the beat.

Rating: *\*\*\

Note: Another book by this illustrator is reviewed here.

Baby Bear's Big Dreams
by Jane Yolen; illustrated by Melissa Sweet

We all know Jane, don't we? I can dispense with the formal introduction about her 250 books and iconic status in kidlit circles?

Good.

All you really need to know is whether installment #983 in the Baby Bear series is any good.

Of course. She could probably write this stuff in her sleep. I remember reading on her blog that she still gets rejection letters. I don't believe it either, but I swear I'm not making it up.

This Baby Bear is well worth the cover price for rhymes that gleefully glide past and a fanciful premise. Okay, the idea of a little kid dreaming of what he'll get to do as a big kid has been done to death, but Yolen has a way of making it worth one more try:

When I grow up
in a year or four,
I'll get a tent
and go explore.
I'll wear brown boots
and a feathered hat,
and bring along
a sleeping mat.

See? What'd I tell ya. Nice stuff. And you even get some counting in there, as she goes from one year to five, with Baby Bear still needing a good-night tuck even when he's all grown up. It's written from inside a kid's head, with all the contradictions and exaggerations playfully glossed over with a big smooch.

Sweet's watercolors are, well, sweet, and get the job done without too much fuss.

Rating: *\*\*\

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.

I want the recipe.

Rating: *\*\*\

Where the Giant Sleeps
by Mem Fox; illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky
Harcourt, Inc.

Has anyone ever done the definitive, scholarly study on why Russian illustrators kick butt? Seriously. There's tons of them around, dribbling paint across many of my favorite picture books.

In this one, a sleeping child's imagination takes over, and fairies, witches and other magical beings slumber throughout a dream landscape that takes the shape of a dozing giant. The trees are his hair, for example, and a tilled field forms striped trousers.

That's it, really, plus some simple, rhythmic text that also rhymes, to set a quiet tone for bedtime.

But the real star here is Radunsky, who blends a surreal touch to the rounded figures and coarse brushstrokes on handmade paper for a blurry, otherwordly feel that's slightly out of focus, as if the boy's sleeping brain was just flitting through it. The illustrations are laid out as if on a map to reinforce the dreamscape idea.

Rating: *\*\*\

Not content with two blogs (this one and Pemberty’s Ponderings), two websites (my author site and Aussiereviews), last night I decided to have a go at Squidoo, and created a new lens Rhyme Time, which focuses on rhyming books for children. At present it’s mostly a collection of links, but I’m thinking I might also include some reviews of rhyming books. I’m pretty passionate about good rhyme. The

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.

Rating: *\*\*\*\