WINGS ON THE WIND

This beautifully designed and illustrated anthology offers 23 poems about birds of many types engaged in many sorts of behavior. Kiesler (Snow Comes to the Farm, 2001, etc.) selected the poems herself, choosing mainly traditional, rhyming works from the first half of the 20th century. The selection includes several anonymous, short poems and works by Margaret Wise Brown, Edward Lear, Carl Sandburg, and Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as the familiar “Something Told the Wild Geese” by Rachel Field. Kiesler’s lovely oil paintings effortlessly capture birds in flight in all seasons, with children often integrated into the scene. Several of her illustrations, including the cover painting, feature the same little Asian girl, a budding bird-watcher who clearly shows her delight in observing and feeding her bird friends. This is the only anthology of collected bird poems currently in print, although Douglas Florian’s On the Wing: Bird Poems and Paintings (1996) and Jane Yolen’s Bird Watch: A Book of Bird Poetry (1999) cover similar avian territory from single authors. (Poetry. 4-9)