Just Around the Corner: Poems About the Seasons (A Bill Martin Book) - Hardcover

PreSchool-Grade 2-This collection of 25 poems is a newly illustrated, slightly altered edition of Jacob's work by the same name (Holt, 1964; o.p.). Several poems have been cut, while three verses have been added. Organized by season, the poems are brief and use fairly simple language. Their light humor, pervasive rhyme, and frequent word repetition make this a possibility for beginning readers. Nature's reflections-insects on a summer night, ducks in the rain, bears hibernating, autumn leaves falling-and seasonal aspects of everyday life-sneezes, kites, the shore-are the focus here, with a few holidays also represented. A couple of the pieces are striking in their evocation of an image or feeling; the rest are enjoyable but not extraordinary. The flat cut-and-dyed paper illustrations, with their solid color backgrounds and simple shapes, are cheerful but conventional, too often falling back on cliches. They make a much brighter package than the original edition, but almost overwhelm the words. There is certainly no dearth of seasonal poetry collections; among the better ones for the same audience are Shirley Hughes's Out and About (Lothrop, 1988); Lee Bennett Hopkins's The Sky Is Full of Song (HarperCollins, 1983); Arnold Adoff's In for Winter, Out for Spring (Harcourt, 1991); Sing a Song of Popcorn (Scholastic, 1988); Marilyn Singer's Turtle in July (Macmillan, 1989); or haiku collections such as Wind in the Long Grass (S.&S., 1991) and In the Eyes of the Cat (Holt, 1992). This isn't a bad job, it's just not a crucial purchase.
Nancy Palmer, The Little School, Bellevue, WA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.