In a paean to trees, George and Kiesler follow up on The Great Frog Race and Other Poems (1997), with a similar specialized collection of nature poetry, loosely organized around the four seasons. An astute beholder, George resists the obvious—acorns, apples, leaves falling—for tiny, honed observations on the knotholes in a fence, a hammock that “fills the empty space between two trees,” or a jutting branch that doubles as “a tree horse” rather than a tree house. A dozen words or so are bound into small parcels; even as the contents are unwrapped, there is room for the imagination. Told from the point of view of an oak tree or a fisherman that snags a pine, this ode begs comparison to Janice May Udry’s A Tree is Nice (1955). Kiesler has lightened her textured oil palette with the new greens of leaves and maple shoots, pale cream buds, and a bright wayward kite against a winter white snow sky. Her figures, particularly faces, are deliberately abstract compared to the portraits of her main characters—trees. A lovely, often luminous, collection. (Picture book/poetry. 5-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1998
ISBN: 0-395-87611-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
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
With an eye toward easy memorization, Katz gathers over 50 short poems from the likes of Emily Dickinson, Valerie Worth, Jack Prelutsky, and Lewis Carroll, to such anonymous gems as “The Burp”—“Pardon me for being rude. / It was not me, it was my food. / It got so lonely down below, / it just popped up to say hello.” Katz includes five of her own verses, and promotes an evident newcomer, Emily George, with four entries. Hafner surrounds every selection with fine-lined cartoons, mostly of animals and children engaged in play, reading, or other familiar activities. Amid the ranks of similar collections, this shiny-faced newcomer may not stand out—but neither will it drift to the bottom of the class. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-525-47172-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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