Twelve poems, most in the first-person voices of tide-pool inhabitants, offer a glimpse into the watery world of the intertidal zone. But young readers or listeners not already familiar with that mysterious world may be left adrift. Nothing in the text or illustrations defines that quite distinctive environment. Barnacles, sea slugs, sea urchins, sculpins, mussels, starfish, hermit crabs, anemones, lobsters, octopuses and plankton—Swinburne mixes East and West Coast creatures, highlighting a few distinctive characteristics in his playful, sometimes ragged poetry and adding a short paragraph of factual detail for each. On each double-page spread, against a watery blue background, Peterson’s equally lighthearted cartoons show anthropomorphized, googly-eyed creatures; some suggest they can all be found together. The author includes a glossary of unfamiliar words used in his poems as well as a note and some suggested web and text resources. Teachers and librarians expecting science at the level of Swinburne’s previous work (Wings of Light, 2006, etc.) will be disappointed, but this might supplement more informative texts. (Poetry/informational picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58089-200-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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