Today at the Bluebird Cafe
Starred Review.Kindergarten-Grade 4—"It's all-you-can-eat at the Bluebird Café,/a grasshopper-katydid-cricket buffet,/with berries and snails and a bluebottle fly,/a sip of the lake and a bite of the sky." The 21 poems that follow, each presented along with a single- or double-page illustration, address characteristics of different birds. Some entries are humorous, such as "The Woodpecker" ("If you think that his life is a picnic,/a seesawing day at the park,/I ask youjust onceto consider/the aftertaste/of bark"). Others are more thoughtful, such as "The Eagle" ("She rides the sky like she owns the sun,/on a sea of air and light-/surfing, skimming, rising high,/then sweeping low and tight") or "The Swan" ("Fairy-tale bird on a moonlit pond,/pulled by stars or a magic wand…"). All of the poems contain clever imagery and scan well. Rankin's watercolors have soft, muted tones and add charm, humor, and elegance to the offerings. The lighthearted paintings, sometimes realistic and sometimes more fanciful, depict delightful scenes of animals and children interacting.—Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.