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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This superbly crafted blend of poetry and the "celebration" of Earth's rare "survivalist" life forms is simply stunning!, April 12, 2010
This review is from: Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature's Survivors (Hardcover)
Throughout time innumerable species have called Earth its home, yet a full 99% of these life forms have disappeared. Which ones have adapted to the relentless changes over the course of countless millennia and just how did they manage to survive when so many others perished? In this book you will learn about fourteen of them. You will learn about which botanical division they are in the hierarchy of life, how long they have existed on Earth, their size, and just how they managed to survive. You will begin with the first life form, bacteria, which began 3.8 billion years ago and will complete your journey with the human being and learn how our species survived after arriving 100,000 years ago. In between you will learn about the mollusks, lichens, sharks, beetles, diatoms, geckos, ants, grasses, squirrels, crows, dandelions, and coyotes.
Gecko on the Wall
Her jaws dart out
To crunch up flies.
Her tongue flicks up
To wipe her eyes.
She climbs up walls
With eerie cries.
Her tail comes off:
A wriggling prize!
She sprints and leaps
and slinks and spies . . .
Sigh.
Don't you wish you were a gecko?
This superbly crafted blend of poetry and the "celebration" of Earth's rare "survivalist" life forms is simply stunning. This blend brings something as simple as the lichen and actually makes it seem exciting. Each life form is accompanied by a poem and vibrant illustrations that animate the pages. The poems are varied and range from the diamante to an incredible free flowing verse that takes the form of a shark. I found and sensed a lot of excitement in a topic that normally many children would bypass as dull. This book brings new meaning to the phrase "survival of the fittest" and could easily be used as a stepping stone for a school report on one of the species noted in the book. If you want an engaging read about the ubiquitous survivors of the world, you might want to take a look at this marvelous book!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Richie's Picks: UBIQUITOUS, May 23, 2010
This review is from: Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature's Survivors (Hardcover)
UBIQUITOUS by Joyce Sidman and Beckie Prange is the most exciting book I encountered last month at ALA in Boston.
UBIQUITOUS gracefully intertwines poetry, prose, and illustration on the topic of why certain life forms have beaten the odds and remained viable on our planet over unfathomable lengths of time while the vast majority of life forms have come and gone.
UBIQUITOUS exposes readers to a great variety of poetic forms and to the concept of having poetry and prose side by side. (Thus, modeling the concept of having a poem introduce a topic.) It is exactly what we -- well, I -- want to see happening with poetry in science and math and history classrooms and in the gymnasium and...well, does anybody out there still teach drivers ed?
UBIQUITOUS is a true picture book. The poems, prose, and illustrations interact and each contributes fully to the presentation of the concepts and to the enjoyment of the book. The prose segment of the spread on lichens (as with the others) runs approximately 150 clear and well-chosen words. The last book this duo designed was the Caldecott Honor book
SONG OF THE WATER BOATMAN & OTHER POND POEMS. I'm not going out on a limb -- just stating the obvious -- in predicting that members of several ALA committees, NCTE committees, IRA committees, and poetry award committees will all be fully aware of what is accomplished here.
UBIQUITOUS begins and ends with a creative and eye-catchingly colorful and swirling endpage timeline which depicts where many of the book's subjects fit into the scheme of things. (For those of us who remember high school science, that means that bacteria is way over to the left and everything else is way over to the right.) I am teaching a class to library students this summer on children's and young adult poetry and UBIQUITOUS will be the first trade poetry book each of them will be required to read for the class. It's that good.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WOWWWWW! Heavenly book--not just for kids, November 24, 2010
This review is from: Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature's Survivors (Hardcover)
This book will put a smile on anyone's face. Except a kid struggling with reading, because ubiquitous is long word. But for a kid with curiosity this is an adventure in a book. Poetry and science and art usually don't mix too well and there are actually several examples languishing in my library and yours. But this astonishing astonishing book manages to have light, beautiful poetry, rich art, and convenient capsules of information on a wide array of creatures. My staff was oohing and aahing over this book that just arrived in the library. It's probably the ideal book to give any natural scientist, "greener than thou" relative, or poetry lover. But the art just has to be seen to be believed. The page on grass was beautiful--how do you do that??
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