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Dear Book Lovers, Welcome! I am delighted that you have found The Through the Looking Glass blog. For over twenty years I reviewed children's literature titles for my online journal, which came out six times a year. Every book review written for that publication can be found on the Through the Looking Glass website (the link is below). I am now moving in a different direction, though the columns that I write are still book-centric. Instead of writing reviews, I'm offering you columns on topics that have been inspired by wonderful books that I have read. I tell you about the books in question, and describe how they have have impacted me. This may sound peculiar to some of you, but the books that I tend to choose are ones that resonate with me on some level. Therefore, when I read the last page and close the covers, I am not quite the same person that I was when first I started reading the book. The shift in my perspective might be miniscule, but it is still there. The books I am looking are both about adult and children's titles. Some of the children's titles will appeal to adults, while others will not. Some of the adult titles will appeal to younger readers, particularly those who are eager to expand their horizons.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Poetry Friday - A review of Wild Wings


When Jane Yolen gets together with her photographer son Jason to create a book, the result is always fantastic. Today's poetry title is one of these collaborative books, and I was delighted to spend a quiet half hour reading it. 

Jane Yolen
Photographs by Jason Stemple
Poetry Picture Book
For ages 6 to 9
Boyds Mills Press, 2002, 1-59078-173-2
   Jane Yolen belongs to a family of bird watchers. Encouraged by their father, all three of Jane’s children grew up watching birds and trying to identify them. Her youngest son Jason “was always the keenest birder of the family,” and when he sent his mother some photos of birds that he took in South Caroline and Florida, she asked him to send her some more. The pictures were so beautiful and powerful that she wanted to write poems to accompany them, and this is what she has done in this book.
   In her poems, Jane Yolen explores the lives of fourteen different species of birds. Some of the poems capture a moment, a snippet of time. For example, in the first poem we see a beautiful egret, “A cloud of feathers / above the feathered pond.” There it stands still until a man in a boat arrives, and then the shy bird flies up with a “rush of broad wings.”
   Other poems give us a portrait of the bird being described. In Brother Hawk, the hawk tells us what it is waiting for as it sits on its “solitary perch.”
   Then there are those word paintings that beautifully describe the bird shown in the accompanying photograph. When she saw her son’s photo of Wilson’s Warbler sitting on a twig, Jane Yolen felt that the little bird looked as if “sunshine / fell down on a branch.”
   Using a variety of poetry forms including a gem-like haiku, Jane Yolen takes us into a world of feathers, bright eyes, shiny beaks, and open sky. The overall effect of the book is to give us a sense of the poet’s obvious love of birds.
   

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