Illustrated by Joan Rankin
Margaret K. McElderry Books/Simon & Schuster, 2007
$15.95
32 pages
for: Kids
Rating: 3.5
Endpapers: Whimsical kids and animals and all sorts of things hanging down by strings, held on to by birds claws, trying to fly.
I scrounge the poetry sections of the libraries and bookstores, but today found a few that I've missed. This one was fun because I've become so enamored of the feathered guys outside my window recently. Some of the poems anthropormortize the birds a little too much for my taste, but many are pretty cool. Illustrations are watercolor-y and whimsical.
Love the rhythm to this one:
Today at the Bluebird Cafe
It's all-you can-eat at the Bluebird Cafe,
a grasshopper-katydid-cricket buffet,
with berries and snails and a bluebottle fly,
a sip of the lake and a bite of the sky.
and this one's funny....
The Woodpecker
If you thnk that his life is a picnic,
a seesawing day at the park,
I ask you just once to consider
the aftertaste
of bark.
no blue jays in Arizona, but this brings good memories of my grandmother's take on a jay:
Blue Jay Blues
Blue as a bruise
on a swollen knee,
ruling the world
from a maple tree.
Squawking out orders,
getting his way,
hogging the feeder,
and having his say.
Raising a fuss,
causing a flap,
a flying complainer
in need of a nap
and this so reminded me of summer nights at camp on Abram's Pond:
The Loon's Laugh
No tweedle-dee-dee on your windowsill.
No sunshiny tune from the top of a hill.
No chirp. No coo. No warble or cheep.
No bubbly twitter or sweet little peep.
The kind of a laugh in the purple of night
that makes you sit up and turn on the light.
A wail. A chuckle. A shriek at the moon.
You pull up your covers. You hope it's a loon.
And there are many more, including the cardinal, eagle, hummingbird, toucan, puffin, vulture, hoopoe, crow, robin, mockingbird, kingfisher, ibis, quail, great horned owl, cockatoo, bobolink, swan, and penguin!
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