A solid bit of instruction, delivered amid much Triassic tomfoolery.
Reluctant to be eaten, a froggy Triadobatrachus gives a toothy, literary-minded Coelophysis some basic schooling in the art and craft of poetry.
Angleberger’s cartoons, drawn on raggedly torn squares arranged as panels on brown paper backdrops, lend rough-and-ready energy to the amphibian’s desperate efforts to distract its hungry, versifying attacker. “Don’t chase me…chase life!” The little green lecturer notes that sticking to accurate facts and genuine feelings will lead to better writing. So will avoiding “lazy” rhymes like eat and meat. The frog also suggests practicing short forms like a limerick or a “speed haiku” and, just for fun, composing “poo-etry” on some topic gross enough to, coincidentally, kill one’s appetite. The predator poet records steadily improving verses in a small notebook. All the while, fraught encounters with even larger dinos and a side trip to the “pen tree” for a ripe new pen supply plenty of action, silly and otherwise, on the way to an amicable literary partnership. (“Well,” says the nervous narrator of the tree, stepping out of character for a moment, “where did you think he was going to get a pen? Walmart?”) Budding poets in our own Cenozoic era will also find these simple prehistoric precepts and exercises helpful first steps.
A solid bit of instruction, delivered amid much Triassic tomfoolery. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781419772801
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Abrams Fanfare
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
When budgets or problems aren’t quite right for the likes of Spider-Man or the Dark Knight, here’s a reasonably priced...
From Blunder Woman to Stuporman, this gallery of underemployed B-list superheroes is up for any task.
Got rats and mice? Call on the (inch-high) Verminator! Supernatural foes will flee from the garlic foam wielded by Muffy the Vampire Sprayer. Afflicted by gangsters? “When racketeers insist on quiet / and it’s not wise to start a riot, / send the Baby, send the Baby.” Furthermore, “And if those cries don’t make them hyper, / Weapon Two is in the diaper.” Along with having distinct individual powers and abilities, several of these eager job seekers combine to offer enhanced services. Armored Sir Knightly and The Masked Man, both aging veterans, can team up to entertain at children’s parties, for instance, and Kelly (ejected from the Green Lantern Corps for wearing a heterodox shade of green) will join silk-spinner Caterpillar to design stylish new costumes for “Trendy Defenders.” Using a free range of page designs from sequential panels to full-spread scenes, Jones reflects both the changing rhythms and the overall buoyancy of Singer’s rhymes with simply drawn, brightly colored cartoon views of each S.E.A. member in action.
When budgets or problems aren’t quite right for the likes of Spider-Man or the Dark Knight, here’s a reasonably priced alternative. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)Pub Date: July 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-43559-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
Well meant but unsuccessful.
The sincerity in these versified valentines to 13 often-reviled animals may ring true, but the natural history doesn’t always pass muster.
Following a strong opener—“Turkey vulture, please be mine, / Not because you soar so fine, / But ’cause you rock on clean-up crew; / No rot is left when you are through”—the quality of the informational content takes a sharp nose dive. There are arguable claims that moles and opossums do no damage to gardens and that flies and cockroaches should be considered helpful recyclers of dead matter, as well as the befuddling, apparently rhyme-driven assertion that moths (not as caterpillars but in their flying, adult stage) are pests that “dine on fields of grain.” Dubbing these and other subjects from skunks and vampire bats to mosquitoes and snakes “secret friends,” Lang closes with an invitation to readers to compose similar love notes to “someone who is misunderstood.” In oval or unbordered natural settings, Gallegos renders each creature with reasonable accuracy, though sometimes with a smile or oversized eyes for extra visual appeal.
Well meant but unsuccessful. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9834594-5-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Prospect Park Media
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
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