A frequent picture-book author-illustrator offers 21 snappy poems about animals, each depicted in a square, dynamically composed watercolor. The succinctly phrased verse is fresh, occasionally whimsical, and witty with wordplay and puns (``The pounding spatter/Of salty sea/Makes the walrus/Walrusty'' is accompanied by a picture of a resigned looking old specimen in shades of rust). Sly humor pervades the pictures as much as the verse: the anteater's one-way arrow for ``A thousand termites riding in/But no one riding out''; a mega-clawed ``underwater/Mobster'' lobster (``So be careful/On vacation/Not to step on/This crustacean''); ant tunnels that spell ``Ant City''; a caterpillar (``not a cat'') that has chewed a cat- shaped hole in a leaf; a sloth so indolent that flowers sprout beneath its chin. Subtle, sophisticated, and quite charming. (Poetry/Picture book. 4-10)ers sprout beneath its chin. Subtle, sophisticated, and quite charming. (Poetry/Picture book. 4-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-15-295178-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1994
“It’s wise to stay clear / Of the dangerous cobra / All months of the year, / Including Octobra.” But it wouldn’t be wise to stay clear of Florian’s latest poetry collection, sixth in his successful series of witty poems and paintings about creatures of all sorts (Mammalabilia: Poems and Paintings, 2000, etc.). This volume includes 21 short poems about reptiles and amphibians, including common creatures such as the bullfrog and the box turtle and more exotic specimens such as the komodo dragon and the red-eyed tree frog. Teachers will like the way the rhyming poems integrate into elementary science lessons, imparting some basic zoological facts along with the giggles, and kids will love the poems because they’re clever and funny in a style reminiscent of Ogden Nash, full of wordplay and sly humor. Florian’s impressionistic full-page illustrations are done in watercolors on primed, brown paper bags, often offering another layer of humor, as in the orange newt reading the Newt News on the cover. A first choice for the poetry shelves in all libraries, this collection is toadally terrific. (Poetry. 4-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-202591-X
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
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
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