Weird Pet Poems - Hardcover

PreSchool-Grade 3. This collection of poems begins with a boy celebrating his eighth birthday and thinking about the type of pet he wants. Subjects in the selections that follow range from the ordinary ("The Porcupine" by Karla Kushkin) to imaginary creatures such as Rebecca Kai Dotlich's "The Mudgimu," which looks like a hippopotamus. Not all of the pets are weird; many children have turtles or bulldogs. The forms include rhyme, haiku, and free verse; they are by popular and lesser known poets. Rogers's detailed watercolor animals come to life as the boy and his sister romp through the book inspecting pet possibilities. Perspective is occasionally unrealistic, as when the boy peers at an unusually large caterpillar. As the book closes, he has chosen a puppy, and the weird creatures that were overlooked loom darkly in the kitchen window; though they appear friendly, they might frighten young children. The book begins and ends with an inviting menagerie and the poem, "The Animal Song." Several of the offerings are new to this collection; others have been previously anthologized. The appropriately weird cover art will hook youngsters.?Angela J. Reynolds, West Slope Community Library, Portland, OR
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Animals great and small, real and imaginary sprawl across Rogers's vigorous, spread-filling, eye-filling watercolors in this wild and woolly successor to Monster Soup and Other Spooky Poems (1992). Evans opens with a poem of her own, sending a joyous eight-year-old out to celebrate his birthday by searching for the perfect pet. He considers James Reeves's ``The Doze'' (``Through Dangly Woods the aimless Doze/A-dripping and a-dribbling goes''), then a yak, a pterodactyl, a bat, a monkey, an ant, a mud-loving ``Mudgimu,'' and others, who appear in poems by Marilyn Singer, Theodore Roethke, May Swenson, et al. At last he settles on Issa's puppy, sleeping in the long grass ``with a leaf stuck in his mouth.'' With just 14 poems, including the one on the endpapers, this is a slender gathering, but the selections vary nicely in tone and level of discourse, and the illustrations expand upon the pieces with exuberance. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.