Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow [Hardcover]

Joyce Sidman (Author), Beth Krommes (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2006 | Age Level: 7 and up | Grade Level: 3 and up

Discover the hidden world of the meadow in this unique combination of poetry riddles and science wisdom. Beginning with the rising sun and ending with twilight, this book takes us on a tour through the fields, encouraging us to watch for a nest of rabbits, a foamy spittlebug, a leaping grasshopper, bright milkweed, a quick fox, and a cruising hawk.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Kindergarten-Grade 5–As in Song of the Water Boatman (Houghton, 2005), Sidman applies her flair with poetry to explore the interactions of creatures and plants in a particular environment. Here, she employs varied poetic forms with simple explanations for a pleasing introduction to meadow ecology. The poems are posed as riddles in facing pairs: We are the ghosts/of those/who have come before/The gray ones/Leaping/Gone/ What are we? The spread following each set answers the questions and describes briefly an aspect of each animal's physiology or behavior. Visual clues complement the poetic suggestions in striking scratchboard scenes that are saturated with color. The busy, patterned views provide readers with much to see in this meadow, including magnified views of the insect denizens. They also incorporate ample white space for the text, nicely highlighting the visual qualities of much of the poetry. Sidman concludes with a brief explanation of how meadows change over time and eventually become forests through the process of succession. This term is defined again in the glossary, which also includes one poetry form, the pantoum. This book is a handsome and versatile compendium, melding art, poetry, and natural history.–Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Sidman follows the Song of the Waterboatman and other Pond Poems (2005) with another picture-book collection of verse that celebrates an ecosystem. Here, the setting is a meadow, and each energetic selection offers another view of a wild, buzzing landscape teeming with animals, from leaping grasshoppers to barely glimpsed deer ("Swift / Still / Here / Gone"). Many poems are more conceptually challenging than those in Waterboatman, and children will have questions about the science references and each poem's riddle, which invites them to guess the poem's subject. Krommes' scratchboard illustrations have a static, decorative quality that lacks the startling vibrancy of Becky Prange's work in Waterboatman. Once again, though, Sidman supports the poetry with fact-filled, prose paragraphs, and an appended glossary further defines concepts. As in Waterboatman, the poetry draws children straight into an awe-inspiring natural world with infectious sounds and beats, inventive images, and a range of poetic styles that make the book, like Sidman's previous titles, an excellent choice for use across the curriculum. Also suggest Maxine Kumin's Mites to Mastodons, reviewed on p.55. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 7 and up
  
• Hardcover: 48 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children; None edition (September 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 061856313X
• ISBN-13: 978-0618563135
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 9.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #59,346 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #36 in Books > Children's Books > Science, Nature & How It Works > Environment & Ecology
  • #53 in Books > Children's Books > Science, Nature & How It Works > Health > Diseases

More About the Author

Joyce Sidman is known for her fresh, inventive poetry for children. Her award-winning books include Dark Emperor (A Newbery Honor Book), Song of the Water Boatman and Red Sings from Treetops (both Caldecott Honor Books), Butterfly Eyes (Cybils Award), and This Is Just to Say (Claudia Lewis Poetry Award). A recent starred review in School Library Journal said, "Sidman's ear is keen, capturing many voices. Her skill as a poet accessible to young people is unmatched." Born in Connecticut, Joyce now lives in Minnesota. Visit her at www.joycesidman.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a wonderful addition to our library., March 18, 2007

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Homespun Light Reviews - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow (Hardcover)

I love this poetry book. I bought it because it won the Cybil award for best poetry for children. And I am so pleased with it. The poetry is clever, the illustrations are beautiful, and the text is educational.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gorgeous unique children's poetry book..., December 20, 2006

By 

M. Jackson (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow (Hardcover)

This is a stunning poetry book for children. Kids often shy away from poetry because it can seem vague and inaccessible but the author draws the reader in by making each poem a riddle/guessing game. She gives descriptive clues about the animals and insects of the meadow and then concludes by asking, "What am I?" or "Who is he?" etc. The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, stunning really. They are made by the scratchboard technique to produce rich deep colors with intense yet simple detail. This is a beautiful book, quite unlike anything else I've seen.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Touches each clear gem with its sidelong gaze", November 16, 2006

By 

E. R. Bird "Ramseelbird" (Manhattan, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow (Hardcover)

I don't mean to jump the gun here, but if we happen to be in need of a future Children's Poet Laureate once Mr. Prelutsky concedes the throne, I would like to nominate one Ms. Joyce Sidman for the honor. I can't really consider myself to be any kind of expert on the form, mind you. Poems seem nice enough, but they very rarely wow me. If something rhymes that's cool, but I'm a lackadaisical poetry lover at best. It really takes something with a bit of punch to wake me out of my anti-poetic malaise, and that something (more often than not) is Ms. Sidman. Her acquisition of a much coveted Caldecott Honor for, "Songs of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems", may have struck some as out of left field, but for anyone familiar with her work there could be no surprise. Now she's followed up that hit with yet another. Taking the purportedly incompatible notions of science and verse, Ms. Sidman weaves the two together so seamlessly that the reader is left completely unaware of the fact that this poetry book is (gasp, shudder) TEACHING them something. Not for the faint of heart, to say the least.

Sixteen poems describe the multitude of meadow denizens that stake a claim in that particular kind of land. Each poem describes a creature, though it's up to the reader to guess that animal/plant/insect's identity. Two pages of poetry showing a hint of the thing being described lead into two more pages of factual information. For example, you might read that, "We tumble / we twitter / we dip / float / and flitter", but when you turn the page you'll find information telling you how goldfinches (the answer) are "extremely social birds, flocking together not only during migration but also all year long." Some poems are funny, some are mysterious, and most leave you ah-hankerin' for more. At the end kids will also find a Glossary of those terms that might have escaped their comprehension earlier in the book.

The writing is, as always, magnificent. My favorite poem out of the bunch is, "An Apology To My Prey", which contains such lines as "And my wings: I regret their slotted tips / that allow such explosive thrust / their span that gathers wind / effortlessly, and of course their / deadly, folding dive." Sometimes when I meet with the homeschooler bookgroup that I run, I do a poetry unit with them for kicks. Hearing the kids say lines like, "a golden sickle poised over / your soft, helpless heart" or "seeking, as they do, that final grip", is something I look forward to. Ever confusing the issue, Sidman never plays it safe. She could have just kept her poems within the same ABAB rhyme scheme and no one would have given it a second thought. If I have any objection with the book it is the mildest wish that perhaps maybe there could have been a brief explanation of the types of poems found in the story. What is the name of a poem where the words themselves make the shape of the animal being discussed (as is done with, "Don't I Look Delicious?") or those read in two voices (as with "Sap Song")? Looks like teachers will have some work on their hands using this book in their poetry unit. Time to break out Paul B. Janeczko's, "A Kick In the Head" for defining the right forms.

I was a little surprised to find that that illustrator on this project was not Beckie Prange (as she was on "Song of the Water Boatman") but rather the somewhat similar Beth Krommes. Where Prange worked in woodcuts, however, Krommes prefers the scratchboard technique. It's rather enthralling. More to the point, I personally feel that the switch to Krommes was a good move on the publisher's part. In "Song of the Water Boatman" Prange did a nice job, but the illustrations felt almost a little too straightforward. They were entirely accurate, but (sorry, guys) kinda dull. Prange limited her color palate, and the result was a perfectly nice if not particularly thrilling series of pages. Krommes, in contrast, isn't afraid to liven things up a little. Her image of gathering dew shows tiny blue circles clustering close under a purple sky filled with variegated stars. The meadow is alive here, encompassing vast fields, or a single eye of a buttefly as needs be. There are also two panoramic views at both the front and the back of the book of the meadow at dawn and at night that demand to be stared at for several full minutes of time. Particularly if that viewer happens to be of the youngish brain-still-growing variety.

Ms. Sidman is, of course, not the only children's poet to tackle scientific notions in a poetic fashion. I would be much amiss not to mention Jon Scieszka's lovely little "Math Curse" and "Science Verse". Still, if kids learn anything from Scieszka's books it more as an afterthought than part of his original intent. And Ms. Sidman, for all that she packs fact after fact into this book, never ends up with a dry as toast school textbook either. She knows exactly how to sift together equal parts information and entertainment. And you know, you can yammer on as long as you want about things like "the circle of life" and how one creature effects another's existence and never make even the slightest dent of an impression on a young person's brain. Far better to just hand a kid this book then. Here we can see how the fox eats the rabbit and the milkweed sustains the butterflies without launching into dull preachiness. This is the cycle expanded and encompassing a wide range of critters big and small. The rare meeting of "interesting" with "faaaaabulous".