THIS PLACE I KNOW

Heard (Songs of Myself, not reviewed, etc.) offers a 9/11 collection pairing each of 18 poems with a new work from a different children’s book illustrator. Except for Emily Dickinson’s “ ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” and a Walt Whitman passage, the selections are from 20th-century poets: Eloise Greenfield writes of children seeking out their deepest feelings; Wendell Berry, of finding “The Peace of Wild Things,” Langston Hughes and Louise Driscoll, of holding on to dreams. The art opposite each selection effectively captures its mood: Giselle Potter, Matt Tavares, and Melissa Sweet depict children dancing or flying; Shane W. Evans, in a more reflective mood, shows two hands framing a star; Petra Mathers looks to a seashell’s strong, silent spirals. Several artists depict cities or skylines, and the collection closes with Chris Raschka’s exuberant, impressionistic view of lower Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge, matched to Ann Turner’s tribute, in which God creates New York “long ago and here and always.” Though there is no biographical information about the poets to go with the appended section of artists’ statements, this joins a spate of similarly therapeutic titles that may take anxious children out of themselves, for a time at least, with verbal and visual expressions of sympathy. A portion of the retail price will be donated to charity. (Poetry. 6-12)