Children's Book Reviews:
Have a Happy New Year With One Of The Happiest Of Joys...READING!
Reviewed By Selene Vasquez
PICTURE BOOK: AGES 4 THRU 8
Max’s Words
by Kate Banks
Illustrated by Boris Kulikov
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 32 pp., $16.00
Max’s older brothers are serious coin and stamp collectors whereas Max inexplicably decides to accumulate words! A clever homage to the written word that will inspire kids to cut and paste their own creative stories.
PICTURE BOOK: AGES 8 THRU 10
One Potato, Two Potato
by Cynthia Defelice
Illustrated by Andrea Uren
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 32 pp., $16.00
Kindly Old Mr. and Mrs. O’Grady subsist on a single potato all of their hard scrabble soil years, until they find a magical pot that comically duplicates its contents. Cartoon style drafting is as wonderfully funny and energetic as this familiar tale.
POETRY: AGES 4 THRU 8
The Moon
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Illustrated by Tracy Campbell Pearson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 32 pp., $16.00
A picture book depiction of Stevenson’s famous 12-line poem, which begins “The moon has a face like the clock in the hall”. Luminous ink and watercolor illustrations evoke the beauty of a moonlit night shared by father and son.
POETRY: AGES 8 THRU 10
Mr. Ferlinghetti’s Poem
by David Frampton
CIP, 32 pp., $18.00
The novelties of life in a New York City of long, long ago...doctors making house calls and children lying on the floor listening to the radio. Exuberant woodcuts in tribute to the beat icon Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Selene Vasquez is a media specialist at Orange Brook Elementary School in Hollywood, Florida.
