With verse and illustrations running the gamut from creative to kooky and occasionally gross, kids should devour this...
More nonsense verse from inveterate punster/illustrator Brown.
Fun knows no bounds in this collection of over 80 zany poems and accompanying mixed-media illustrations, topped off by the author’s Q-and-A written almost entirely in verse. Younger children will enjoy poring over Brown’s detailed, silly drawings of animals, insects and imagined objects and hearing the tight, surprising end rhymes that bind many of the poems (a delightful pairing of “speedometer” with “vomiter” in the poem “Carsick” comes to mind). Middle-grade readers will likely revel in the sophisticated wordplay Brown employs to depict the humorous perspectives offered throughout, particularly those of less-savory creatures. A vulture laments, “This is my diet? / If it died, I try it?” Soon-to-be butterflies complain, “Just because we’re pupae, / people give us the poop-eye.” And then there’s the ho-hum fate of lice: “I would hate to be a louse— / always feeling lousy, / even when overjoyed / or pleasantly drowsy.” Successful, too, are moments where poem and illustration work hand in hand to pun, as in the poem “Hugh”—“Meet my Belgian friend. / He lives near Bruges, on a farm. / His name is Hugh Jarm”—illustrated with farmer Hugh waving one giant arm in greeting.
With verse and illustrations running the gamut from creative to kooky and occasionally gross, kids should devour this entertaining collection in one sitting. (Poetry. 6-12)Pub Date: March 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9928-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
An incredible connector text for young readers eager to graduate to weighty conversations about our yesterday, our now, and...
Past and present are quilted together in this innovative overview of black Americans’ triumphs and challenges in the United States.
Alexander’s poetry possesses a straightforward, sophisticated, steady rhythm that, paired with Nelson’s detail-oriented oil paintings, carries readers through generations chronicling “the unforgettable,” “the undeniable,” “the unflappable,” and “the righteous marching ones,” alongside “the unspeakable” events that shape the history of black Americans. The illustrator layers images of black creators, martyrs, athletes, and neighbors onto blank white pages, patterns pages with the bodies of slaves stolen and traded, and extends a memorial to victims of police brutality like Sandra Bland and Michael Brown past the very edges of a double-page spread. Each movement of Alexander’s poem is a tribute to the ingenuity and resilience of black people in the U.S., with textual references to the writings of Gwendolyn Brooks, Martin Luther King Jr., Langston Hughes, and Malcolm X dotting stanzas in explicit recognition and grateful admiration. The book ends with a glossary of the figures acknowledged in the book and an afterword by the author that imprints the refrain “Black. Lives. Matter” into the collective soul of readers, encouraging them, like the cranes present throughout the book, to “keep rising.”
An incredible connector text for young readers eager to graduate to weighty conversations about our yesterday, our now, and our tomorrow. (Picture book/poetry. 6-12)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-78096-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Versify/HMH
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two.
Rollicking verses on “numerous” topics.
Returning to the theme of her Mathematickles! (2003), illustrated by Steven Salerno, Franco gathers mostly new ruminations with references to numbers or arithmetical operations. “Do numerals get out of sorts? / Do fractions get along? / Do equal signs complain and gripe / when kids get problems wrong?” Along with universal complaints, such as why 16 dirty socks go into a washing machine but only 12 clean ones come out or why there are “three months of summer / but nine months of school!" (“It must have been grown-ups / who made up / that rule!”), the poet offers a series of numerical palindromes, a phone number guessing game, a two-voice poem for performative sorts, and, to round off the set, a cozy catalog of countable routines: “It’s knowing when night falls / and darkens my bedroom, / my pup sleeps just two feet from me. / That watching the stars flicker / in the velvety sky / is my glimpse of infinity!” Tey takes each entry and runs with it, adding comically surreal scenes of appropriately frantic or settled mood, generally featuring a diverse group of children joined by grotesques that look like refugees from Hieronymous Bosch paintings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two. (Poetry/mathematical picture book. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0116-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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