Out and About: A First Book of Poems

From Publishers Weekly The British author-artist's new entry in the Nursery Collection will captivate parents and children, as do all her inimitable celebrations of family life. Bright, exuberantly detailed paintings illustrate rhyming lines featuring a small girl and her wobbly baby brother as they experience the special features of the passing seasons. The book begins with the siblings throwing themselves wholeheartedly into glorious mud on the first spring day. Later, the two join in communal activities as neighbors are all "out and about": the kids play; grown-ups plant gardens and spruce up their houses. In the same inviting vein, the story continues into summer, fallwith a harvest of fruits, nuts, berries as just "desserts"and snowy winter, crowned by Christmas. A lovely book. Ages 3-7. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From School Library Journal PreSchool-Grade 1 A rosy, fat-cheeked little girl narrates 18 simple poems about the weather and the seasons, describing experiences with mud, blossoms, water, and sand with rhythmic simplicity. While the poems are pleasant and evoke the images a child might have of weather and seasons, it is Hughes' realistic pictures which make this book. Readers not only come to know the seasons through natural data but also come to know the small narrator's family and her world. Children will enjoy watching for the narrator's baby brother, her parents, her cat and dog, and her special toys in the half-page watercolor paintings and the small detailed pictures which surround the text. Seasonal poems are clumped together and set off by a double-page spread which highlights people and their activities in each season. The busy spring pictures, full of people gardening, cleaning, and hanging out of windows to talk and enjoy the weather, evoke the sense of freedom of that season after a long winter. While the poems would work well in preschool story hour sessions on seasons, the detailed pictures cry out for a lap or occasions in which one or several children sit down and pore over the book. Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, LaramieCopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.