From School Library Journal
Grade 3-6-Ackerman, a poet and naturalist who writes most often for adults, here turns her skilled hand (and ear, and eye, and voice) to children's poetry. There are 15 poems, 3 for each of the 5 senses, each one about a different animal. They are concise and compact, with a quietly humorous tone that sometimes veers into the kind of silliness that many kids love. For instance, she writes about the cow, "-every meal is grass with a side order of grass,/plus huge dollops of grass smothered in grass,/followed by grass chops and, for dessert, more grass." There are many fresh, friendly images that young readers will enjoy: "Consider the owl: a pair of binoculars with wings-." Various facts about the animals are seamlessly interwoven, and may inspire a little research on the nonfiction shelves. The pictures are subtle, a lovely match for the poems. Some are small, some larger, but all are precisely rendered, with evident feelings for the creatures shown. This is a small book with an elegant and perfectly scaled design. It is more similar to a jewel than to an ice-cream sundae-in other words, it may not have the wide appeal of the more colorful or broadly humorous offerings, but readers who want to go beyond the obvious will savor it.
Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, ILCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
*Starred Review* Gr. 3-7. "Living things all feel and sense / their way through / every happenstance." Ackerman, who's best known for her numerous works of poetry and nonfiction for adults, explores the unique ways that animals navigate the world, in these poems for young people. Grouped into sections representing each of the five senses, the poems are clever, funny, challenging, and playful, with occasionally made-up words reminiscent of Lewis Carroll. Even if young readers miss the precise meaning and concepts, they will be captivated by Ackerman's rolling, rhyming sounds that mimic the motion of her subjects--the rise and fall of a humpback whale at sea, "high as angel's eyes" and then low "beneath the galloping brine." Her startling, original imagery will encourage them to wonder how and why animals' bodies function as they do: an owl is really "a pair of binoculars with wings." The best lines are atmospheric and beautiful: of bats' in flight, we hear "only moon-blessed quiet and the eeriest flutter." Teachers will want to read this aloud and then pass it around to show Sis' lovely pointillist sketches that are whimsical without distracting from the words. Like Ackerman's adult work, these poems will inspire readers to find awe and excitement in the natural world.
Gillian EngbergCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
