Moxley’s distant, restrained depictions of children at play strike appropriately dispiriting visual notes for this uninspired gathering of poems—billed as coming “from around the world,” though all were written in English, and over half by poets living either in England or North America. Aside from Sheila Hamanaka’s “All the Colors of the Earth,” Rabindranath Tagore’s “Paper Boats” (both previously published as solo titles for children), and a passionate screed from pseudonymous South American Teresa de Jesús—“When I see food / tossed into the garbage / and a poor man poking around in case / it isn’t rotten yet / it makes me furious!”—the entries are largely bland, prosaic observations about trees, seasons, hair, or the sky; jump-rope rhymes; or two chestnuts from Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses. Capped by biographical notes so skimpy that two contributors aren’t even mentioned, this also-ran isn’t likely to reach readers the way James Berry’s Around the World in Eighty Poems (2002), Floella Benjamin’s Skip Across the Ocean (1995), or any number of similar offerings with an international focus have. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8234-1822-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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
A dozen familiar dinosaurs introduce themselves in verse in this uninspired, if colorful, new animal gallery from the authors of Commotion in the Ocean (2000). Smiling, usually toothily, and sporting an array of diamonds, lightning bolts, spikes and tiger stripes, the garishly colored dinosaurs make an eye-catching show, but their comments seldom measure up to their appearance: “I’m a swimming reptile, / I dive down in the sea. / And when I spot a yummy squid, / I eat it up with glee!” (“Ichthyosaurus”) Next to the likes of Kevin Crotty’s Dinosongs (2000), illustrated by Kurt Vargo, or Jack Prelutsky’s classic Tyrannosaurus Was A Beast (1988), illustrated by Arnold Lobel, there’s not much here to roar about. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-58925-044-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
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