This pleasant collection of diverse verse celebrates the feats our feet help us complete and the joys of going shoeless. “Naturally / naked feet / don’t need / superglue / or superheat / No supernatural / supersonic / supercharging / supertonic / Naturally / naked feet / are / entirely / complete. . . . ” Some touch on family relationships: “If” on the love of being danced around on Daddy’s feet, and “Mama” on energizing a tired mother with a foot massage at the end of her work day. Others observe feet on trampolines or in bubbling Jacuzzi’s or feeling the wind out a car window. Form-wise, all the usual suspects are present: rhyme, list poems, free verse, shaped-verse. McElrath-Eslick’s realistic watercolors are somewhat uneven, but they all extend their accompanying verse. Author of one collection for adults, Weisburd’s first for children would fit in large collections or schools with a need for poetry on the body. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59078-306-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
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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