Meet an alphabet of classroom pets in Sierra’s (The Dancing Pig, 1999, etc.) collection of quirky, entertaining verses. There’s a moose who doubles as a coat rack, Claude the feline acrobat, and Polly the Parrot, who is sent to the principal for inappropriate language. A class of unflappable children and teachers eagerly adopts each animal. Saltzberg’s cartoon-like illustrations, done in pencil, watercolor, and color pencil, nicely complement the action. The animals and children interact in a variety of settings that include a science fair and several field trips. However, the illustrations do not convey personalities. Facial features vary only slightly and expressions of emotion do not vary at all. In each illustration all characters display the same bland smiles, frowns, or looks of mild surprise. Several of Sierra’s verses suffer from uneven meters that interfere with the flow of the poems, and such tortured rhymes as “carpenter/sharpener” and “not/caught.” There is much to like about this book, some very funny concepts, in fact, but there are other collections of animal poetry that are ultimately more satisfying. (Picture book/poetry. 5-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-202033-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
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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