What is Goodbye?
Illustrations by Raul Colon
Hyperion, 40 pages, ages 8 to 12, $15.99
Goodbye, the saddest word in the English language, is in the mouths of a brother and a sister. Jerilyn and Jesse have lost their older brother. It is never clear what happened; what is perfectly certain, through Grimes' streamlined, moving verses, are the feelings.
With their parents enveloped in grief, Jerilyn and Jesse are on their own, equipped with children's sensitivities. They experience hearing the news, momentarily forgetting the news, surviving the funeral and "The Awful After."
From Jerilyn: I bite my tongue bloody / from holding it what seems / like hours. / I wander through this / silly crowd, wondering why / no one tells the truth. Dead is dead / Now "gone away" / Not "lost." / Not "on a journey." / Not "passed" – as if / my brother's life / were some test / he got a good grade on, / and now he's gone.
Through alternating voices, Grimes records the voices and experiences of two very believable children, struggling and surviving.
Kristine O'Connell George
Illustrated by Barry Moser
Harcourt, 48 pages, ages 6 to 12, $16
When a hummingbird began dive-bombing the family on the patio, George took notice. And when it built a thumbnail-sized nest in a potted ficus tree, she was hooked. With pen and journal over eight weeks, she recorded the nesting bird's hovering moves – and the range of emotions the tiny, shimmering bird and its two babies provoked in her own family.
They're gone / No sign of them / The time finally came. / My hummingbird family moved away.
Tonight / the dark seems filled / with cold and cat and owl. / Pocket-sized birds sleeping, alone, out there.
This is how / it's supposed to be. / So why do I keep watching / this empty nest in this empty tree?
It's a volume to linger over, remarkable for George's attentiveness and insights and for Moser's delicately painted illustrations. George also writes a prose version of the hummingbird's visit, detailing how profoundly this bird moved her. A bibliography and two pages of hummingbird facts finish up the book.
How to Cross a Pond
Illustrated by Meilo So
Knopf, 42 pages, ages 8 to 12, $14.95
In these water poems, illustrated by So in watery blue India ink, Singer describes the prosaic – babbling brooks, for instance, and spring showers – but is best when she wanders farther upstream.
In "Lost and Found" she writes of what happens on her street when the snow melts and lost objects – and people – suddenly appear. There are my mother's earrings, my sister's ball / the test I nearly passed, the homework I really lost / ... the neighbors I haven't seen since the blizzard came.
In a bit of reverse thinking, she ponders the relationship between a pond in the desert and an island in the ocean. To wit: Is each an oasis?
And in "Wells" she recalls an ancestral appreciation of water. Learn to love / the heft of the bucket / in your hands, / the weight of the cool jar / on your head.
She finishes the poem with an apt admonition for California kids (and adults): Only then will you never squander / what is not yours to own.
If you like this, check out Singer's companion volume, "Footprints on the Roof," poems about the Earth.
The World According to Dog
Photographs by Doug Mindell
Houghton Mifflin, 80 pages, ages 10 and older, $15
From "Dog in Bed":
Nose tucked under tail / you are a warm, furred planet / centered in my bed. / All night I orbit / tangle-limbed, / in the slim space / allotted to me. ...
This is how it is with love. / Once invited, / it steps in gently, / circles twice / and takes up as much space / as you will give it.
A poetry teacher in Minneapolis, Sidman puts full heart into these tender poems that touch on the inevitable entertwining of human and dog souls. Mindell's black-and-white photographs capture dogs in unguarded emotional moments. Sidman also asked teen writers to record their own dog tales, and while these are less provocative than her own words, they widen the scope of canine affection.
This is a Blue Ribbon nonfiction winner from the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books.
Revenge and Forgiveness
Edited by Patrice Vecchione
Holt, 148 pages,
ages 12 and older, $16.95
Sept. 11 inspired Vecchione to look to poetry to explore the roots of revenge, which can be momentarily empowering, and forgiveness, which can be a lot harder to summon up. She's reached back to William Shakespeare, included poems by Walt Whitman, Emily
Dickenson and Ted Hughes, as well as more recent works by Naomi Shihab Nye, Sandra Cisneros and Wendell Berry.
Vecchione's forward is remarkably sensitive and readable, and the idea itself intriguing. But the final product feels burdensome – its poems are dense and elusive, some evoking deeply troubling emotions.
A note of redemption would have been welcome (more forgiveness than revenge?). But maybe Vecchione is telling us poets are as stuck as the rest of us: harborers of revenge.
The most memorable note is from an anonymous writer: "When you seek revenge, dig two graves."
The Wishing Bone
Illustrated by Tom Pohrt
Candlewick, 52 pages,
ages 6 to 10, $16.99
"Gentlemen of the jury!" cried / The prosecuting pig / As, stepping from behind his desk, / He danced a little jig.
Through rhyming quatrains, Mitchell tells delightfully imaginative stories of justice bought with macaroons and marzipan, of a stroll with a chatty sun, of a hunt for a purple tiger. Its droll light-heartedness makes it a perfect introduction to poetry for younger readers.
Leigh Fenly is Quest editor of the Union-Tribune. She has three