Familiar childhood experiences are described in these lighthearted verses, whose subjects range from the first day of school to the 179th and from beginning kindergarten to having a bad hair day. A section devoted to food (“Appeteasers”) includes “Daddy’s Spaghetti” and “Supermarket Spies,” while “In Full Swing” features activities ranging from “Sidewalk Art” to “The Dance Recital.” “Winding Down” concludes the collection with “In the garden, / dewdrops fall, / the moonlight whispers, / ‘Good night, all.’ ” Lightly and brightly colored gouache and acrylic cartoon drawings decorate each page. Although adult readers may find the verses predictable, lacking the punch of a Prelutsky or a Silverstein, younger readers will probably relate to the familiar situations, and delight in the antics and expressive faces of the sprightly figures whose actions extend the poems. (Poetry/picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6259-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 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
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)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-689-86964-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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