PS/LS Media Center New Materials

From School Library Journal
Grade 1-6-Twenty-two delightful poems with a geological theme, including pieces on tectonic plates, lava, strata, and fossils. Exuberant, silly, and serious by turns, the selections engage imagination with often-humorous wordplay. The simple yet clever collages, many of which incorporate clip-art elements, deepen the intellectual and emotional content, yet keep a light tone. The large images and uncomplicated layouts enhance the read-aloud potential. This book offers a great jumping-off point for earth science, geology/geography, and even math classes. Three pages of endnotes provide additional factual and background details.

From Publishers Weekly
George and Kiesler (The Great Frog Race and Other Poems) team up for another close look at the natural world with poetry that invites readers to meditate on trees. This time the visual delights described in George's poems slightly outshine the illustrations. The best of Kiesler's oil paintings are breathtaking: a trio of doves tucking their heads underwing in the starlight, browning pumpkin vines in the foreground of a pastoral scene, the moon snagged by a branch in the book's title poem. Often, however, the paintingsAparticularly those of childrenAseem to be frozen in time, lacking the energy and vitality of the images in the poetry. George plays nimbly with language and form. Her invented words in "Tree Traffic" seem simultaneously strange and familiar: squirrels are "commuters... rippling up and down,/ tails unfurled./ The treeway is/ heavily squirreled." George also surprises readers with creative rhyme schemes, such as that of "Cooperation," in which two horses, sharing the shade of one tree, stand "muzzle to rump/ rump to muzzle/ like a jigsaw puzzle." Especially elegant is George's description of a spring tree bud, "a tiny velveteen satchel,/ the color of pale cream" inside of which readers can find "one rolled and folded/ neatly packed/ leaf." Dedicated to "the saplings," this leaf-filled collection would make just the right gift for nature lovers. Ages 5-9.

From School Library Journal
Grade 1-5-A companion book to Lunch Money: And Other Poems about School (Dutton, 1995). The 22 energetic selections reflect the typical day-to-day activities and problems including being late for school, the first day, having to go to the bathroom, fund-raising, and other events. Shields utilizes a variety of forms including a concrete poem, poems for two voices, and a jump-rope rhyme. Meisel's vibrant cartoon illustrations are lively and fun and capture the poems' humor and insight. Students will relate to the situations presented and the emotions that are expressed. A welcome addition, whether as a read-aloud or for children to enjoy independently.

From School Library Journal
Grade 1-5-This collection of light verse looks at subjects ranging from crickets to clocks, dogs to dust. Thirty-one poems employ various rhyme schemes as they describe everyday things and situations that many children will relate to: company coming, a favorite chair, secretly feeding the dog under the table, toilet paper that has run out. Oftentimes concretely descriptive ("Diapers in the bathtub/Stroller in the hall/Highchair in the kitchen/Spinach on the wall-"), but occasionally employing metaphor (a baby spider that's a "Bungee-jumping astronaut"), most verses are grounded in the commonplace and sometimes surprise ("Need protection?/I'm your man!/I bark at bad guys/Loud as I can!/I've barked all day/Since I was a pup,/But how do they thank me?/`Hey! Shut up!'"). However, some themes seem more adult-sleeplessness, the joyous revenge of passing on ugly family heirlooms, the thermostat wars between mom and dad-or take a nostalgic turn that will be enjoyed more by older children. The layout, cover, and relatively large-font size, however, suggest a younger set. The pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations scattered about the white pages are for the most part skillfully drawn, with a delicate line and lots of color, adding humor and helping to set the scene. They portray a middle-class milieu, which is in keeping with much of the poems' content, but the all-white cast limits the ability to imagine other people who might inhabit these lines. The verses can stand alone, however, and would make for fun reading aloud-especially the four poems for two voices.

From Booklist
K-Gr. 2. The five rhymes in this All Aboard Poetry Reader each tell a nonsense story that takes off from daily life. Several are about food. As a boy slurps his noodles, an alien lands in his chicken soup ("He was goopy and green and not too tall. / His spaceship looked like a matzo ball"). Then there's the legendary kid who does everything upside down (he eats with his toes and runs bases on his hands) and is celebrated for it. The sounds of the thumping rhymes help make reading easy, and the big, colorful cartoon-style pictures extend the silliness with everything from that delicious soup bowl to the wild animals that skedaddle from a sneezing elephant on the savanna.

From School Library Journal
Grade 3 Up - This collection of 15 story-poems ranges widely, from Eugene Field's "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" to Alfred Noyes's "The Highwayman." Familiar favorites like Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussy-cat" and Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" are included along with lesser-known entries such as C. S. Lewis's "The Late Passenger" and W. H. Auden's "O What is That Sound" and a rather nontraditional retelling of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" by Roald Dahl. The illustrations from Peter Bailey, Siân Bailey, Carol Lawson, and Chris McEwan are well matched to each piece, using styles varying from realistic to cartoonlike, and rendered in a variety of mediums from pen and ink and watercolor to deeply saturated acrylics. The selections are well suited for read-alouds, with plenty of dense, sophisticated language. Each one is briefly introduced by a recommendation from a well-known author (J. K. Rowling, Eva Ibbotson, Avi, Sharon Creech, etc.); an afterword offers biographical sketches of the poets and authors included. This is a collection to grow on and to treasure over the years.

Kindergarten-Grade 3--In this child-friendly collection of short, bouncy poems, Katz pulls together more than 50 previously published selections by a broad spectrum of authors. She sets the tone with one of her own: "With a poem in your pocket/and/a pocket in your pants/you can rock with new rhythms./You can skip./You can dance./And wherever you go,/and whatever you do,/that poem in your pocket is going there, too." Familiar Mother Goose rhymes and anonymous tidbits such as "The Burp" ("Pardon me for being rude./It was not me, it was my food") are included, along with traditional entries, such as Emily Dickinson's "Autumn," Lewis Carroll's "Twinkle, Twinkle," and an excerpt from William Blake's "Night." However, the greatest representation comes from contemporary, well-loved children's wordsmiths, including Eve Merriam, Jack Prelutsky, Carol Diggory Shields, Aileen Fisher, and Lucille Clifton. The verses range from humorous (William Cole's "Banananananananana") to introspective (Gwendolyn Brooks's "A Stranger to Himself"). Hafner's whimsical watercolor-and-pen illustrations skillfully decorate the pages, visually enhancing the experience of each composition. In a closing note, Katz expresses her hope that these poems "…will find short-term homes in the pockets of many children and long-term homes in their memories." This superbly designed volume should find a home on most library shelves. From School Library Journal

Grade 3-5-Like The Goof Who Invented Homework (Dial, 1996) and If You're Not Here, Please Raise Your Hand (Four Winds, 1990), Dakos's newest collection highlights incidents taken from her teaching days-here, mostly written in the poetic voice of a girl named Penny, who, from the first day of school, realizes that her teacher is unusual. Ms. Roys has a collection of plastic hands, and she takes the class on an overnight to the museum, where they sleep beside dinosaur skeletons. She wears unusual earrings, and has a pencil cemetery. On the 100th day of school, she fills the classroom with 100 helium-filled balloons, each tied to a pencil, marker, crayon, or pen, and she has a magic wand that her students may borrow when they need to think of fresh ideas. The verses vary in length from a few lines to a few pages, and in style from rhyming couplets and quatrains to unrhymed collective poems written in the form of playlets, in a sort of verbatim conversation. Some are funny, some clever, some poignant. Small pencil cartoons decorate almost every page. Students will relate to Dakos's descriptive recollections of incidents throughout a year in one elementary classroom, and they will appreciate her understanding of children. From School Library Journal