Well tuned to cultivate a deeper appreciation for both poetry and the pleasures and rewards of planting.
Poems celebrating small gardens and those who work them.
Wolf claims school visits as inspiration for this collection, but the gardens he writes about, and that Duncan depicts with fine attention to natural detail, could be planted in any small patch of ground: “A dash of freshly chopped-up chives / will make your salad come alive. / To make your salsa taste sublime, / just add cilantro every thyme.” Wolf gives the book a pedagogical slant with verses about Linnean names for common veggies and the uses of keeping a notebook of observations as well as an appendix pointing out instances of personification, concrete poetry, irony, rhyme schemes, and like study matter. Some verses are arranged for multiple voices or, like the hilarious “March of the Garden Volunteers” (“Rising from the compost bin, / volunteers are moving in”), choral reading. Seeds, songbirds, and even bugs get their says—“Avoid the use of pesticides! / Say no to insect homicides!”—on the way to one last wintry insight that “Gardens come and go! / Gardens come and go!” Racially diverse groups of children working in gardens and enjoying the harvest alternate with scenes of common flora and fauna throughout.
Well tuned to cultivate a deeper appreciation for both poetry and the pleasures and rewards of planting. (Illustrated poetry. 6-9)Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0455-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
No substitute for blankets or shelter, but perhaps a way of securing some warmth for those in need.
Gaiman’s free-verse meditation on coming in from, or at least temporarily fending off, the cold is accompanied by artwork from 13 illustrators.
An ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the author put out a social media appeal in 2019 asking people about their memories of warmth; the result is this picture book, whose proceeds will go to the UNHCR. For many refugees and other displaced persons, Gaiman writes, “food and friends, / home, a bed, even a blanket, / become just memories.” Here he gathers images that signify warmth, from waking in a bed “burrowed beneath blankets / and comforters” to simply holding a baked potato or being offered a scarf. Using palettes limited to black and the warm orange in which most of the text is printed, an international slate of illustrators give these images visual form, and 12 of the 13 add comments about their intentions or responses. The war in Ukraine is on the minds of Pam Smy and Bagram Ibatoulline, while Majid Adin recalls his time as a refugee in France’s “Calais jungle” camp. “You have the right to be here,” the poet concludes, which may give some comfort to those facing the cold winds of public opinion in too many of the places where refugees fetch up. The characters depicted are diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
No substitute for blankets or shelter, but perhaps a way of securing some warmth for those in need. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063358089
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it.
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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