Words With Wrinkled Knees: Animal Poems

From Publishers Weekly Word-lovers will applaud Esbensen's unique poems, not only because they deftly describe various animals, but also because they make us notice the names by which we call them. ELEPHANT is "a word with/ wrinkled knees and toes/ like boxing gloves," and OWL "opens soundless wings/ sails out/ to where the smallest letters/ cower in the dark." Both text and art celebrate the connections between things and words. SNAKE "slides/ among typewriter keys slips/ like a silk shoelace away," while the long-lashed GIRAFFE "munches on the leaves/ of books lined up/ on the topmost shelves." Children and adults alike will enjoy Esbensen's refreshing metaphors and the many moods of Stadler's black-and-white animals.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal Grade 3-6 Each of these 21 animal poems tries to capture the essence of an individual animal by examining the word used to name it. Sometimes the exercise works, as with snake ("slips /like a silk shoelace /away") or hummingbird ("Glimpse this wordits clockwork /partswhere blossom /intersects with air") but more often it fails. The penguin is reduced to the cliched waiter: "and bring you a /Snow Queen SpecialANTARTICA /in a frosted glass." What works consistently are Stadler's black-and-white illustrations. Always interpreting and expanding the text, the ink drawings breathe life into a book that somehow seems an intellectual exercise rather than a joyous romp through the animal kingdom. With the many poetry books about animals to choose from, ranging from the concise zaniness of Belloc's The Bad Child's Book of Beasts (Sparhawk, 1982) to the often quiet elegance of Cole's collection The Poetry of Horses (Scribners, 1979; o.p.), stay with poems that truly capture their animal subjects. This book doesn't. Kathleen D. Whalin, Pub. Lib. of Columbus and Franklin County, Reynoldsburg, OhioCopyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.