Animal Sense
Grade 3-6-Ackerman, a poet and naturalist who writes most often for adults, here turns her skilled hand (and ear, and eye, and voice) to children's poetry. There are 15 poems, 3 for each of the 5 senses, each one about a different animal. They are concise and compact, with a quietly humorous tone that sometimes veers into the kind of silliness that many kids love. For instance, she writes about the cow, "-every meal is grass with a side order of grass,/plus huge dollops of grass smothered in grass,/followed by grass chops and, for dessert, more grass." There are many fresh, friendly images that young readers will enjoy: "Consider the owl: a pair of binoculars with wings-." Various facts about the animals are seamlessly interwoven, and may inspire a little research on the nonfiction shelves. The pictures are subtle, a lovely match for the poems. Some are small, some larger, but all are precisely rendered, with evident feelings for the creatures shown. This is a small book with an elegant and perfectly scaled design. It is more similar to a jewel than to an ice-cream sundae-in other words, it may not have the wide appeal of the more colorful or broadly humorous offerings, but readers who want to go beyond the obvious will savor it.Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, ILCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.