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IF NOT FOR THE CAT

Name: IF NOT FOR THE CAT
Author: Jack Prelutsky
ISBN: 0-06-059677-5

by Jack Prelutsky & illustrated by Ted Rand ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2004

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Prelutsky changes pace and adopts a philosophical tone in a set of animal riddles framed as first-person haiku: “Gaudily feathered, / With nothing at all to say, / I can’t stop talking.” Answers are provided at the end, but they’re superfluous, as Rand fills each spread with gorgeous inked-and-brushed figures; the parrot’s plumage is more iridescent than “gaudy,” a skunk’s white stripes and tail explode like fireworks against a solidly black background, a mouse peers anxiously through its dimly lit hole, inches away from a feline nose. “If not for the cat, / And the scarcity of cheese, / I could be content.” As the solutions are there on the page, this works best if children don’t see the picture until they’ve heard the riddle, and had a chance to guess who’s posing it. But even in this uncharacteristic form, Prelutsky’s poetry is as engaging as ever, Rand has outdone himself, and the collaboration is likely to become as much of a storytime favorite as Beatrice Schenk De Regniers’s classic It Does Not Say Meow (1972). (Picture book/poetry. 5-8)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-06-059677-5

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY

- BOOK REVIEW
HARD-BOILED BUGS FOR BREAKFAST
by Jack Prelutsky ; illustrated by Ruth Chan

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SILVER MOON
by Jack Prelutsky ; illustrated by Jui Ishida

- BOOK REVIEW
STARDINES SWIM HIGH ACROSS THE SKY
by Jack Prelutsky ; illustrated by Carin Berger

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ALL THE COLORS OF THE EARTH

by Sheila Hamanaka ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1994

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY

- BOOK REVIEW
GRANDPARENTS SONG
by Sheila Hamanaka & illustrated by Sheila Hamanaka

- BOOK REVIEW
THE HOKEY POKEY
by Larry La Prise & Charles P. Macak & Taftt Baker & illustrated by Sheila Hamanaka

- BOOK REVIEW
BEBOP-A-DO-WALK!
by Sheila Hamanaka & illustrated by Sheila Hamanaka

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BLOCK CITY

by Robert Louis Stevenson & illustrated by Daniel Kirk ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2005

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Echoing Ashley Wolff’s 1988 approach to Stevenson’s poetic tribute to the power of imagination, Kirk begins with neatly drawn scenes of a child in a playroom, assembling large wooden blocks into, “A kirk and a mill and a palace beside, / And a harbor as well where my vessels may ride.” All of these acquire grand architectural details and toy-like inhabitants as the pages turn, until at last the narrator declares, “Now I have done with it, down let it go!” In a final twist, the young city-builder is shown running outside, into a well-kept residential neighborhood in which all the houses except his have been transformed into piles of blocks. Not much to choose between the two interpretations, but it’s a poem that every child should have an opportunity to know. (Picture book/poetry. 5-7)