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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, July 15, 2011

Poetry Friday - A review of In the Spin of things.

The world is full of motion. Everywhere you look things are moving in some way. A cat's whisker is twitching, a branch is swaying, a fly is zipping around the room. In today's poetry book, Rebecca Kai Dotlich explores and celebrates some of the everyday sounds that fill our lives.

Rebecca Kai Dotlich
Illustrations by Karen Dugan
Poetry Picture Book
For ages 7 to 9
Wordsong, 2010, 978-1-59078-828-8
We live in a world that is full of movement. Leaves on trees shiver, birds fly through the sky, cars whizz down roads. Most of the time we barely notice what is going on around us because we are so busy being in motion ourselves.
   In this clever collection of poems, the author explores everyday moments when something is in motion. She begins by looking at the way in which cereal bobs in a bowl of milk. There are “flagging flakes,” “soft moons” and even cereal stars that do “the butterfly stroke” in the milk. Then there is the pepper shaker that gets busy sprinkling “a million / midnight dots” on hash browns and scrambled eggs. When it’s work is done, the shaker is back on its base “hot dots settle / into place.”
   In the classroom the pencil sharpener “nibbles” away at pencils, and a pair of scissors “slides open, / squeezes shut.” The globe spins around “a swirl of blue / a whirl of brown” as oceans and continents going flying by.
   Later in the book, we explore the movement a “crumpled” empty soda can makes as it tumbles across a sidewalk. We watch wind chimes dancing like “tin ballerinas” on their strings in the wind, and we see the flame of a candle with its “curvy wave” flickering before it is blown out.
   With wonderful word pictures and a clever use of rhyming and non-rhyming verse, Rebecca Kai Dotlich turns the ordinary into something extraordinary. 

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