Years ago a New York publicist told me that one reason companies welcomed celebrity children's books was to generate money to publish poetry books. Now even poetry must prove its earning power as shown by five recent books that merge younger non-fiction, an expanding and lucrative genre, with verse. Fortuantely, all are masterful representations of information, rhythms and rhymes, and the link between the two.
Rhyming picture books are a great introduction to non-fiction as in writer-illustrator Bob Barner's "Penguins, Penguins, Everywhere!" (Chronicle $14.95, ages 3-6) Information placed in rhythmic meters set the tone for a book full ideas and cadences. "Some penguins live in icy places and some live in the heat. Their colors help them hide when they fish for fishy treats." Bright yellow backgrounds accent penguin's playfulness while warmer blues and purples reflect the nurture that comes from snuggling or devoted fathers tending unhatched eggs. Barner ends his active romp with a slowdown perfect for young listeners as "Sleepy little penguins end another perfect day". Two afterpages tell more about penguin types, sounds, movements, food, and predators.
A series of short poems go a long way to define time in Hazel Hutchins' "A Second is a Hiccup: A Child's Book of Time" (Scholastic, $16.99, ages 4-7). The author's sequential organization and child-centered imagery make sense of this somewhat difficult early concept. Hutchins begins by measuring seconds with "a hiccup/ The time it takes to kiss your mom/Or jump a rope/Or turn around." She builds on this verbal pictures, counting a minute as "Sixty hiccups, sixty hops", adding a lyrical suggestion, "Or if you sing just one small song/Chorus, verses, not too long." There is variety in her quantifying, descriptions, and verses. Not all Hutchins' lines rhyme, but many sections do end in couplets. Sometimes time is assessed with observations, a week being "seven wake-up, seven sleeps", or a month's being the time needed for new skin to grow after a scrape. She also gauges time with whimsical activities, or recognizable accomplishments such as the hour needed for building a sandy tower, or the month it takes to learn to tie a shoe. Kady Denton's illustrations demonstrate the concepts with three families of smiling children who explore the world with delight.
New in paperback is Kurt Cyrus' "Oddhopper Opera" (HBJ, $7.00, ages 5-8). "Once upon a garden rotten, /Twice forlorn and half forgotten..." begins the artist-poet, setting the scene quietly as he zooms in on textural watercolored leaves of brown and gray. Rollocking rhythms and a world teeming with insect antics are only a page turn away as spring leaps into warmth and "Crickets and dung beetles, earwigs and fleas/ Great galloping grubs, get a whiff of that breeze." Cyrus' colorful realistic images show ladybugs, aphids and others as they thrash, root, scoot, buzz and bump. In a musical blend of alliterative and sensory description, every page celebrates nature, informs about insect behavior, and many do so with humor, surprises, visual delight, and a touch of disgusting details children love best. Take for example the intriguing poem that observes centipede Mama Pitter-Patter-Pede laying 100 eggs. The verse meanders through turnip tunnels and in and out of pepper leaves creating both visual and word journeys. Throughout the book, characters appear and reappear. On one page Cyrus launches a snails' race with "Give them a holler a nod, and a nudge...Give them a minute, and see if they budge". Then he traces their progress throughout the book. Pages are crowded with slapstick _________, sights and sounds as we follow the bugs from spring to autumn, through rotting vegetables and dung eating, all the way to understanding.
Douglas Florian is a child-loved illustrator-poet who has joined the ranks of favorites like Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein. Winning fans with poems about favorite subjects like monster, school lunches and mammals, Florian sets his sights higher in "Comets, Stars, The Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings (HBJ, $16.00, ages 5-9). As usual, Florian encapsulates the sense of things in a way that catches readers unawares, often with humor. Generally his art is simple drawings, but these are ethereal and elegant renderings. His intial poem and art set the tone well, "The universe is every place,/Including all the e m p t y space." Florian visually represents the vastness with extra gaps between letters on a blue double-page spread. The page is illuminated with collaged bits of old newspaper clippings about space, painted concentric circles, and an old print of a rayed sun. On the next page a spiraled poem describes a galaxy, miscellaneous shaped spirals circling about to mirror the concept. With cut-outs, colors, and word play Florian goes on to describe celestial bodies and ideas from planets to black holes with perceptions sure to set a child to wondering and longing. He offers a last tease in his final poem, "The Great Beyond" with "Great galaxies spin,/While bright comets race. And I'd tell you more, /But I've run out of space."
The late poet Valerie Worth and illustrator Steve Jenkins are excellently paired in "Animal Poems" (FSG, $17.00, ages 7-10). Writer and artist are astute observations and textural detailing. Jenkins collages are simple and clear images contrasting with Worth's intricate thoughtful verse. Don't be deluded by the simplicity of design, for this is the kind of book that offers a bridge from playful early verses to the kind of poetry that invites children to contemplate the wonder of words, insightful icons and meter-perfect rhythms. Worth imagines, for example, the bulk of a whale, "His whole hill of/Flesh floats easily/In the sea, light as/Dust in sun baths". She goes on to describe the whale in a more unlikely setting "Or earth balanced/Buoyant in thin space". Then she finalizes the metaphor with a powerful last line, noting both are "...poised perfectly/In its own place." Poetic forms vary, the groundhog delivers a soliloquy while her short lines about a snake spill across the page like "a liquid silt". Worth mines and polishes ideas and words to brilliance. Jenkins' visual portrayals are just as careful, each double spread illustrations do justice to both animal and Worth's poems.
Sometimes marketing pushes have good results. All these books will be definite assets in classroom studies, or just furthering the knowledge of children fascinated by words and the world.