Nest, Nook & Cranny - Susan Blackaby

Illustrated by Jamie Hogan
Charlesbridge, 2010
$15.95
54 pages
For: Kids
Rating: 5 !
Endpapers: White pine cones/crabs/snakes.jelly fish on black

All I had to do was open this book and take a peek at the endpapers and I was SOLD. This book is the size of a chapter book though a bit more slender, and it isn't what you expect.

It's full of poetry. Poetry from five different habitats. Desert. Grassland. Shoreline. Wetland. Woodland. They're beautiful, descriptive, and use incredible words. But there's more -- she ends with telling the reader how she wrote each poem. Whether it be cinquain or sonnet, she discusses her use of onomatopoeia, alliteration, similes, metaphors - and also gives information about some of the subject matter. I love this book.

Check out the wordplay, metaphors, similes, snazzy verbs and interesting rhyming:

Otters loll like whiskered boats,
bobbing gently in the swells.
Kelp beds help the otters float
While prying shellfish out of shells.
Thoughtful otters dot the ocean,
Head awash with crabby notions.
Whay prey, tell, do otters dwell on?
Anything that has a shell on.

or

A household tucked inside a hole
Or stuck inside a sticky bowl
Of twisted twigs and mud and stuff
Holds eggs or cheepy heaps of fluff
And various pairs of prickly feet,
Tiny feathers, pointy beaks.

Although it has a bird's-eye view,
With central air and skylights, too,
There's not a lot of room to grow.
Flighty families come and go.
As soon as one clan flies away,
Another mother comes to stay.

The author's from Portland Oregon, the illustrator's from an "island off the coast of Maine." WHICH ONE????