Dotlich (Sweet Dreams of the Wild, 1996) uses her poetry to call up moments in a summer. She celebrates the small tantalizing creatures—bumblebees and butterflies, ladybugs and fireflies— and takes year-around pleasures and puts them outside under the sun: a game of jacks, the reading of a book. The best of her imagery is startling and memorable—whispering through a dragonfly's wing, the sidewalk song of a marble game; there are a number of poems that warrant immediate re-reading, both to pick up on the intimations and to experiment with the beat and wordplay. At least two jump-rope rhymes are worth memorizing; one is a Double-Dutch ditty, while the other could serve as a geography lesson. Anchoring the collection is Gilchrist's artwork; it projects a clear sense that all the fun isn't going to last forever. The cityscapes are especially strong and evocative. (Picture book/poetry. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-56397-660-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
Sleepers awake. An uncommonly pleasing consideration of wakeful wanderings.
Midnight insomnia meets wide-awake waterfowl when an old poem appears in a new form.
On a bit of a poem-to-picture-book tear since she illustrated poet Mary Oliver’s Goldfinches (2026), artist Sweet once more plucks verse from the past. This time E.B. White’s 1928 perambulation poem “Natura in Urbe” is the star of the show. Inspired by his sleepless nights spent walking around Central Park, the poem begins, “While midnight clung to every shore, / I walked me round the reservoir.” On this ramble, the subject encounters a duck swimming serenely at the same late hour. White’s delicious language infuses this simple encounter with wonder as he describes the fowl’s “negligible wake” and asks if he is pondering problems of his own. “A midnight sail to clear his vision / And help him reach some duck decision.” Sweet has a true talent for presenting poems that were never originally intended for children as entirely accessible, even enticing, to young readers. Relying on her signature mixed-media collage style, she incorporates maps of stars and Central Park, alongside painted scenes depicting both nighttime in the city and the nocturnal beauty of nature. The book includes a note from White’s granddaughter Martha discussing her grandfather’s love of nature and offering background on the poem.
Sleepers awake. An uncommonly pleasing consideration of wakeful wanderings. (Picture book/poetry. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9780063304291
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
This heavily earnest celebration of multi-ethnicity combines full-bleed paintings of smiling children, viewed through a golden haze dancing, playing, planting seedlings, and the like, with a hyperbolic, disconnected text—``Dark as leopard spots, light as sand,/Children buzz with laughter that kisses our land...''— printed in wavy lines. Literal-minded readers may have trouble with the author's premise, that ``Children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea'' (green? blue?), and most of the children here, though of diverse and mixed racial ancestry, wear shorts and T-shirts and seem to be about the same age. Hamanaka has chosen a worthy theme, but she develops it without the humor or imagination that animates her Screen of Frogs (1993). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-11131-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
