George's first book features small poems about country living, with a spirited introduction by the late Myra Cohn Livingston (B Is for Baby, 1996, etc.), who has presided over better collections as poet and anthologist. A haze of nostalgia hangs over simple poems about polliwogs, plowed fields, dragonflies, and old metal buckets, somewhat muting their meaning and resonance for contemporary children. ``Patient old fence,/Waiting for another November,'' and ``the perfect tree/different from the rest—/the one where a bird/has built her nest'' are lovely images, but their intensity is not sustained and readers may lose interest. The oil illustrations are heavy and sometimes dark, with rather awkward humans and large animals but clearly modeled insects, frogs, and birds. (Picture book/poetry. 5-8)
Pub Date: March 17, 1997
ISBN: 0-395-77607-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY
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This heavily earnest celebration of multi-ethnicity combines full-bleed paintings of smiling children, viewed through a golden haze dancing, playing, planting seedlings, and the like, with a hyperbolic, disconnected text—``Dark as leopard spots, light as sand,/Children buzz with laughter that kisses our land...''— printed in wavy lines. Literal-minded readers may have trouble with the author's premise, that ``Children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea'' (green? blue?), and most of the children here, though of diverse and mixed racial ancestry, wear shorts and T-shirts and seem to be about the same age. Hamanaka has chosen a worthy theme, but she develops it without the humor or imagination that animates her Screen of Frogs (1993). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-11131-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY
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Iffy art cramps this 25th-anniversary reissue of the joyful title poem from Greenfield’s first collection (1978), illustrated by the Dillons. As timeless as ever, the poem celebrates everything a child loves, from kissing Mama’s warm, soft arm to listening to a cousin from the South, “ ’cause every word he says / just kind of slides out of his mouth.” “I love a lot of things / a whole lot of things,” the narrator concludes, “And honey, / I love ME, too.” The African-American child in the pictures sports an updated hairstyle and a big, infectious grin—but even younger viewers will notice that the spray of cool water that supposedly “stings my stomach” isn’t aimed there, and that a comforter on the child’s bed changes patterns between pages. More problematic, though, is a dropped doll that suddenly acquires a horrified expression that makes it look disturbingly like a live baby, and the cutesy winged fairy that hovers over the sleeping child in the final scene. The poem deserves better. (Picture book/poetry. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-009123-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY
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