Poetry Speaks to Children
Edited by Elise Paschen, illustrated by Judy Love, Wendy Rasmussen and Paula Zinngrabe Wendland
Sourcebooks, $19.95, includes CD
Ages 8 and older
For density and pleasure on many levels, try this reading, seeing and hearing experience. Adults as well as children are the audience here. Did you think of Billy Collins or Robert Bly or W.B. Yeats or Maxine Kumin as children’s poets? With the accompanying CD you’ll hear poetry’s sounding power in Rita Dove’s warmth, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s crisp and rapid delivery, and in Ogden Nash’s elaborately casual tone. Emma Fielding’s delivery of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” is thrilling and rippling. Basil Rathbone reading Poe’s “The Raven” is just as mysterious as we want it to be, though I’d rather have had the poem complete, at least in the text. “Casey at the Bat” is so rousing that spring training can’t come soon enough. The 52 poems are read by 36 poets and artists; 29 poets, past and present, read from their own work. Not a book to hurry through: Sample from it on car trips, read a few each evening.
Opposites
By Robert Crowther
Candlewick, $12.99
Ages 3-6 years
Winter’s Tale
By Robert Sabuda
Little Simon, $26.95
Ages 8 and older
Two books with visual bling that’s enjoyable page by page. Robert Crowther explains the concept of opposites, with examples like “off” and “on” complete with paper tabs young hands can move. Within the framework of a winter journey, Robert Sabuda’s paper technology is more explosive and intricate.
Egypt in Spectacular Cross-Section
By Stephen Biesty
Scholastic, $18.99
Ages 9-12 years
Though this book by Stephen Biesty (perhaps the best known cross-section artist working today, most recently on “Rome”) is couched as a family’s journey on the Nile, Egypt during the reign of Ramses the Great (about the 13th Century B.C.) is the star here, in intricate detail, inside and out. The text is reliable, but the pictures are where a reader will be lost in wonder.
Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around Us
By Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black
Simon & Schuster, $24.95
Ages 10 and older
Here’s the journal of Great-Great-Uncle Arthur referenced in the best-selling Spiderwick series by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. Yes, some of these critters are creepy, but soon you’ll know nixies from kelpies and can protect yourself accordingly.
Fairyopolis: A Flower Fairies Journal
By Cicely Mary Barker
Frederick Warne/Penguin, $19.99
Ages 7 and older
This purports to be a newly illustrated version of Cicely Mary Barker’s journal from the 1920s, when the late Victorian fascination with that flighty other world in the garden was still strong. Because it’s all presented in scrapbook fashion, it’s hard to sort out the newly created material from some authentic ’20s text, but the readers who’ll scramble for this one on the shelf are already more believers than historians.
