Florian (Lizards, Frogs, and Polliwogs, 2001, etc.) keeps rolling along through one successful thematic poetry collection after another, making his work look as effortless and joyful as child’s play. In this latest collection, a companion to his Winter Eyes (1999), he explores both the positives and negatives of the summer season in 28 short, rhyming poems that succeed in being both humorous and finely crafted. Each poem distills one aspect of summer life into a small, polished shell full of rich vocabulary, often encapsulating a common experience such as skipping rope, telling ghost stories around a campfire, swimming like an otter, or fending off flies. Florian’s poems often include clever wordplay or invented words. (“Summerize” sums up the four months of the season in just four lines; “The Sum of Summer” creates new numerical designations: “four fillion flies and five sillion fleas.”) He also includes lots of action themes, as well as sensory experiences that make the reader remember the heat and humidity of summer weather and the warmth of summer sunshine. Florian’s characteristic watercolor illustrations accompany each poem, adding additional notes of simple but stylish humor. Teachers will like this collection for use in the early elementary grades, especially during the last weeks of school; parents will like it for reading aloud on long car trips; and kids will like it because the poems are funny, rhyming, and short. This is children’s poetry at its best, and Florian’s fans will be waiting for the corresponding collections on fall and spring. (Poetry. 4-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-029267-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
“It’s wise to stay clear / Of the dangerous cobra / All months of the year, / Including Octobra.” But it wouldn’t be wise to stay clear of Florian’s latest poetry collection, sixth in his successful series of witty poems and paintings about creatures of all sorts (Mammalabilia: Poems and Paintings, 2000, etc.). This volume includes 21 short poems about reptiles and amphibians, including common creatures such as the bullfrog and the box turtle and more exotic specimens such as the komodo dragon and the red-eyed tree frog. Teachers will like the way the rhyming poems integrate into elementary science lessons, imparting some basic zoological facts along with the giggles, and kids will love the poems because they’re clever and funny in a style reminiscent of Ogden Nash, full of wordplay and sly humor. Florian’s impressionistic full-page illustrations are done in watercolors on primed, brown paper bags, often offering another layer of humor, as in the orange newt reading the Newt News on the cover. A first choice for the poetry shelves in all libraries, this collection is toadally terrific. (Poetry. 4-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-202591-X
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
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
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