Every Day's a Holiday: Amusing Rhymes for Happy Times
Grade 3-6-Koontz offers up a collection of 64 poems about holidays, some well known (Halloween) and others less familiar to American audiences (Sakura Matsuki). He includes significant days (the first day of autumn, Mother's Day, and the shortest day of the year); and birthdays (Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln); along with lots of special days of his own creation (Gravity Day, Lost Tooth Day, and Up-Is-Down Day). While many of the poems have clever themes, the rhyming couplets are often unimaginative and occasionally awkward. Each selection is accompanied by at least one black-and-white illustration that is sometimes charming, sometimes creepy, but always interesting. However, for poetry collections to take you throughout the year, Myra Cohn Livingston's Celebrations (Holiday, 1985), Jack Prelutsky's Dog Days: Rhymes around the Year (Knopf, 1999), and Bill Martin, Jr.'s The Turning of the Year (Harcourt, 1998) are more satisfying choices.Laura Reed, Kitchener Public Library, Ontario, CanadaCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.