Review by Booklist Review
Gr. 2-5, younger for reading aloud. As in Popcorn, a Booklist 1998 Editors' Choice, Stevenson's images range from junkyard jumble to fragile blossoms. With minute particulars of ordinary life, his casual words and wonderful, scribbly ink-and-watercolor pictures work together to make you feel love and longing, mystery and wonder; turn the page, and you laugh out loud with wry recognition. OK, so most kids won't know Robert Frost, but they will get the picture of "Stone Wall" ("All those different rocks / Working together"), just as they will recognize how the screech and slam of a screen door can mean someone you love is either coming or going ("But what a difference it makes to me / your going away / your coming home"). With such simplicity, there is always risk, and a few pieces are flat, but the best of them open out to change the way you see things around you. "Friendly" is about spring, when lilacs bend in the soft air, and even the beech tree sends a branch to pay a visit to your porch. Then there is the amazing intricacy of the paving machine that sits in the dirt, the picture a hilarious jumble of tubes and machinery, "part tank, part spaghetti." Children will see that even the dumpsters that take the worst of everything have a life, and that in a meadow of daisies, one daisy is a miracle. (Reviewed March 15, 1999)0688158374Hazel Rochman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-6-Like the sweet candy corn people nibble every autumn, these poems are delectable tidbits that tickle the taste buds. Stevenson's third collection of poignant, brief poems is both satisfying and illuminating. Once again, layout, text, color, line, and verse combine to produce a delightful array of treats. The 24 poems offer a new view of such diverse topics as peanuts, frogs, dumpsters, and dawn. Who but this master of succinct wordplay and pictures could see candy corn as dragon's teeth, imagine school buses chatting at the end of the day, or find 11 ways to express bird noises? Each selection is exquisitely illustrated in pastel watercolor and black ink; colored pages add interest to several verses and tinted ink highlights others. This gem belongs alongside Sweet Corn (1995) and Popcorn (1998, both Greenwillow) in every library.-Beth Tegart, Oneida City Schools, NY (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
(Primary) Stevenson's unpretentious blending of whimsy and wisdom continues to surprise in this companion book to Sweet Corn (rev. 7/95) and Popcorn (rev. 5/98), although we should have learned by now that anything can be target for his eye and pen. A paving machine sitting by the highway is ""part tank, part spaghetti""; yellow and orange candy corn scattered on the sidewalk look very much like dragon teeth; a stone wall with ""all those different rocks / Working together, / Getting along fine"" signals tranquility. The more lyrical passages are reserved for the natural world: ""At the edge of the woods / The dogwoods are blooming / Like white surf tumbling / From a light green sea."" Or, as in his description of the sky in the moments just before dawn: ""You'll see torn bits of it / Scattered through the trees, / Fallen like confetti, / As if to say / Night is not forever."" Like the other books in this noteworthy series, the watercolor and pen-and-ink sketches and the use of a variety of typefaces subtly extend the visual imagery inherent in the individual poems. A single brush stroke evokes a footprint in the sand; a blue that gets lighter as it moves from left to right across a page promises dawn. n.v. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Definitely on a roll, Stevenson has reinvented himself as a poet, following up Sweet Corn (1995) and Popcorn (1998) with this new set of small, seemingly artless, instantly engaging free verse, printed in a variety of shapes and colors. It's a mix of appreciative observations of the everyday'bird song, hats, the many things passersby carry'with imaginative flights, from the thought that a drawbridge structure makes ``a swell hotel for trolls,'' to the claim that dumpsters rock-and-roll on Halloween; every one of the accompanying freely drawn watercolors captures to perfection the essence of its subject, whether it be a peanut, a shabby old building, dogwood in spring, or a spectacularly complicated road-paving machine. This is another gem from an astonishingly versatile veteran, and readers following the series will rightly speculate on the next collection's title: Feed Corn? Unicorn? (Poetry. 7-9)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
