Review by Booklist Review
Ages 3-8. In a companion to Ride a Purple Pelican(1986) andBeneath a Blue Umbrella(1990), Prelutsky's animal nonsense rhymes for younger children range across the country, from "Peanut Peg and Peanut Pete" on a bright Atlanta street to "Seven Snails and Seven Snakes" that swam across the five Great Lakes. There are also fantasy settings, such as the garden where clothes grow and the place where 10 brown bears with big bow ties gobble plates of apple pies. The large-size book is spacious in design, great for reading aloud, and Mathers is at her best with double-page watercolors that combine farce and silliness with clear, precise characters and landscapes that range from one small hen's awe-inspiring view of the Grand Canyon to a tender close-up of an old owl in a silent forest. Prelutsky does what he says in his letter in Seeing the Blue Between(see p.1250): he makes the ordinary special. Hazel Rochman.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Prelutsky (Awful Ogre's Awful Day) trades his usual giddy hilarity for a tone of gentler glee in this collection of verse. Loosely knit together by U.S. geography, the 28 poems alight everywhere from Tuscaloosa to El Paso, Winnemucca to the Grand Canyon. In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, "Seattle is lovely,/ but I cannot lieD/ without an umbrella/ it's hard to stay dry." The rhymes flow easily, set to a consistently bouncy beat that makes reading them aloud effortless ("Baby in a high chair,/ baby in a bib,/ baby in a stroller,/ baby in a crib"). Mathers's (Lottie's New Beach Towel) watercolors exude a puckish charm well-matched to the nimble wordplay, and she lets loose a menagerie of her trademark sprightly animals, often fleshing out the situations in the poems. In "Carpenter, Carpenter," for instance, a mouse couple enlists the help of a builder to construct their house for the price of a cheese; the artist completes the tale by showing the couple, now with two additions, enjoying the reward with the carpenter at their kitchen table, their completed home emulating the shape and color of the prize cheese. In another, "There Was a Tiny Baker," Mathers chronicles the baker's day from sun-up to day's end, as he shares a cookie with his pet mouse. There's plenty of zip in this nifty outing. Ages 5-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 3-The prolific poet is back with an illustrator who matches him in freshness and simplicity. The poems offer vivid glimpses of life; have a beginning, middle, and end; and have a clear underlying music and flow. The selections are for a slightly younger audience than much of Prelutsky's work: some poems are as simple as Mother Goose rhymes ("Baby in a high chair,/baby in a bib,/baby in a stroller,/baby in a crib"), while others would make great flannelboard rhymes for sharing with four- and five-year-olds ("In her garden, Sarah Small/grows galoshes, short and tall./Shirts of yellow, hats of red/beautify her flower bed"). Many of the 28 poems play with American place names, from Tuscaloosa to Tucumcari, and might enliven a geography lesson. Mathers's wonderful watercolors highlight her talents for color and expression. Her treatment of light is lovely, especially in her delicate and exquisite skies, while the comic dignity of some of her creatures, such as the frogs in red suspenders, suits Prelutsky's mood just right. A superb choice.-Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Preschool, Primary) In the spirit of the author's Ride a Purple Pelican (rev. 1/87), here are twenty-eight more lighthearted poems, many of which invoke place names in the United States ("Through the streets of Minneapolis, / Winnie Appleton bounced that ball, /...bounced and bounced it all that morning / till she finally reached St. Paul"). Setting aside the gruesome glee of his verse for older readers, Prelutsky is content here to describe scenes that vary from realistic to whimsical ("In Indianapolis, what did we see? / An elephant perched on a sycamore tree, / sipping warm milk through an oversize straw- / In Indianapolis, that's what we saw"). The mild humor lies not in the action but in Prelutsky's deft use of language, particularly effective shared aloud. The result is enjoyable, but it is Petra Mathers's illustrations that make the book memorable. Demurely naive, her cheerful, delicately delineated human and animal characters focus on their activities with becoming modesty and grace, whether in expansive scenes glowing with subtle color or in vignettes set off by ample white space. This beautiful volume makes an appealing introduction to light verse. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The title sets the stage for this delightful pairing of Prelutsky's (Awful Ogre's Awful Day, 2001, etc.) amusing rhymes with Mathers's (Dodo Gets Married, 2001, etc.) charming watercolor illustrations. Ranging from sweetly poignant to goofy nonsense, each of the 28 short poems about people and animals is devoted to a double-paged spread, providing ample space for the subtly whimsical pictures to add details to the rhymes and to enliven the meter with perfect piquancy and lilt. "Ten Brown Bears," who gobble plates of pies and then march home, are shown with one bear green in the face. "There Was a Tiny Baker" is illustrated with minute pictures of a teeny man and his equally teeny dog, nearly lost in the great expanse of page. Many of the poems are attached to specific cities or locales from Texas to Winnemucca, e.g., "Peanut Peg and Peanut Pete" in Atlanta. The cleverness in both language and art is demonstrated in "Seven snails and seven snakes / swam around the five Great Lakes. / They took seven years to go / from Thunder Bay to Buffalo." And the rhyme is illustrated as a swimming and diving meet. A brilliant match of talent that's guaranteed to make a hit. (Poetry. 5-10)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
