Hopkins selects 14 child-appealing poems centered on the allure of museums and their treasures. Most poems speculate about precious artifacts of the past, as in “Suit of Armor,” by Beverly McLoughland and “The Moccasins,” by Kristine O’Connell George. Others, such as Hopkins’s titular poem and the apt closer, “Museum Farewell,” by Rebecca Kai Dotlich, focus on the experience of the museum as trove, itself precious and tinged with mystery. Dressen-McQueen’s full-bleed, mixed-media treatments are uneven. Winning portrayals of wriggling, dancing multicultural children against pleasing color fields contrast with spreads in which pastiches of artifacts appear crowded and muddy. A delightful poem by Alice Schertle, “O Trilobite,” garners an intriguing treatment: Trilobites of varying sizes array colorfully against the blue-black of the deep sea. The illustration for “Journey of the Woolly Mammoth” seems stylistically unrelated to others, looking more like a sketch than a finished piece. Still, the poems are well chosen, the little field-trippers sweet and the topic rather thinly covered in the literature. Buy where needed. (Picture book/poetry. 5-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-1204-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
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
With an eye toward easy memorization, Katz gathers over 50 short poems from the likes of Emily Dickinson, Valerie Worth, Jack Prelutsky, and Lewis Carroll, to such anonymous gems as “The Burp”—“Pardon me for being rude. / It was not me, it was my food. / It got so lonely down below, / it just popped up to say hello.” Katz includes five of her own verses, and promotes an evident newcomer, Emily George, with four entries. Hafner surrounds every selection with fine-lined cartoons, mostly of animals and children engaged in play, reading, or other familiar activities. Amid the ranks of similar collections, this shiny-faced newcomer may not stand out—but neither will it drift to the bottom of the class. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-525-47172-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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