HEY YOU! C’MERE

In a burnished urban landscape full of the colors of summer, a group of youngsters gather. “Sis is eatin’ poems! / Josh is drinkin’ poems! / Amelia’s wearin’ poems on her feet! / . . . You’ve got a poem in your pocket, / A poem on your tongue, did you know that?” Their poetry slam takes them past “Tough Kids,” what “A Good Cry” feels like, how fast “Summer” goes. Adults come in for some clear-eyed razzing: “Aunt Evelyn,” who huggles and nuzzles and kootchie-koos “till you shriek”; “Great Granma,” who’s a little deaf, and “Mr. Befuddled,” Mattie’s Uncle Lester. The poems have bounce and pop and innocence, and would perform well for a group in readers’ theater or on stage. Cepeda, who did the truly cool illustrations for Julius Lester’s What a Truly Cool World (1999), matches playwright Swados’s exuberance with vibrating backgrounds of orange or green or turquoise. Thick impasto colors and geometric forms take kinetic shape as the cast of characters, their props (don’t miss the multilayered ice cream cones), and the architecture of fire escapes and sidewalks take the stage. (Poetry. 8-12)