Both playful and enlightening, period.
A collection of peppy poems and clever pictures explains different forms of punctuation.
Rebecca Kai Dotlich’s “A Punctuation Tale” kicks off the proceedings with a punny description of a day full of punctuation; goodnight is “cuddled / in quotation marks.” Ensuing poems discuss the comma, the apostrophe, the dash (“A subdued dude / in tweet and text / he signals what / is coming next”), the colon, the exclamation point, and ellipses. Allan Wolf’s poem about this last is called “…” and begins, “The silent ellipsis… / replaces…words missed.” Prince Redcloud’s “Question Marks” is particularly delightful, with the question “Why?” dancing diagonally down in stair steps. The emphatic answer is a repeated “Because!” Other poems pay tribute to quotation marks, the hyphen, and the period. Michele Kruger explains “The Purpose of Parentheses”: “inside a pair / ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) / of slender curves / we’ll hold your few / inserted words.” The final poem is editor Hopkins’ own, “Lines Written for You to Think About” (inspired by Carl Sandburg), urging young readers to write their own verses employing (what else?) punctuation. The 12 poets included work with a variety of devices and styles for an always-fresh feel. Bloch’s illustrations are delightfully surprising, both illustrating each poem’s key points and playfully riffing on the punctuation itself.
Both playful and enlightening, period. (Picture book/poetry. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-59078-994-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Clever.
A dozen classic poems, with Lewis’ playful revisions on the opposite pages.
The title poem is a reworking of Beatrice Schenk de Regniers’ “Keep a Poem in Your Pocket,” which touts the importance of imagination. The revision exalts the value of memories triggered by little objects—“red hawk feather, / silver penny, pinkie ring”—found in a pocket. Langston Hughes’ “Winter Sweetness” describes a snow-covered house as made of sugar. The revision, “Winter Warmth,” compares a book to a cup of hot cocoa on a frigid day. An excerpt from Jack Prelutsky’s “The Goblin” begins, “There’s a goblin as green / As a goblin can be.” Lewis begins “The Ogre” this way: “There’s an ogre as wide / As a flatbed truck.” He counters Robert Louis Stevenson’s two-line “Happy Thought” with a “Sleepy Thought”; David McCord’s “This is My Rock” becomes “This is My Tree.” Perhaps the cleverest revamping is that of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” In Lewis’ hands it becomes “Stopping by Fridge on a Hungry Evening.” (Said refrigerator is full of algae and mold and rotting food.) Lewis’ poems are a mixed bag—some come off poorly by comparison to their originals—but the book could provide wonderful inspiration for young would-be poets. Wright’s illustrations, in acrylic paint and ink on canvas, add much color, notably including the multiracial cast of children she depicts.
Clever. (Picture book/poetry. 5-8)Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59078-921-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Effectively soporific, though less broadly diverse in culture than casting.
Intricate cut-paper borders and figures accompany a set of sleepy-time lyrics and traditional rhymes.
Aside from “All the Pretty Little Ponies,” which is identified as “possibly African American,” the selections are a mostly Eurocentric sampling. It’s a mix of familiar anonymous rhymes (“Oh, how lovely is the evening,” “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, / Bless this bed that I lie on”) and verses from known authors, including Jane Taylor’s “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” (first verse only), Robert Louis Stevenson’s “My Bed is a Boat,” and Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Seal’s Lullaby.” Melodramatic lullabies such as “Rockabye Baby” have been excluded in favor of more pacifistic poems, and in keeping with the cozy tone (though she does show one cat looming hungrily over a mouse hole), Dalton enfolds each entry in delicately detailed sprays of leaves or waves, graceful garlands of flowers, flights of butterflies, and tidy arrangements of natural or domestic items, all set against black or dark backgrounds that intensify the soft colors. A parade of young people—clad in nightclothes and diverse of facial features, hair color and texture, and skin hue—follow a childlike, white angel on the endpapers and pose drowsily throughout.
Effectively soporific, though less broadly diverse in culture than casting. (Picture book/poetry. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4521-1673-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
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