City Kids: Poems - Hardcover

Hubbell, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0761450793 ISBN 13: 9780761450795

Publisher: Marshall Cavendish Corp/Ccb, 2001

Synopsis

Usually fun, often thoughtful, a collection of poems explores the things ordinary city kids see and do, both good and bad, including stickball, basketball, skyscrapers, bag ladies, gushing fire hydrants, and more.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 2-4-This collection starts off strong with "The Doing Days," a simple verse that holds the promise of more to come. "The doing days have started./School is done, done, DONE!/Wonder what I'll be doing/Now summertime's begun?" Unfortunately, few of the other poems ring as true. "City Kid" is nine lines long and comprised of the word "legs" repeated over and over again with the word "ME" placed in the middle of the fifth line. In "City Rainbow," the letters in the words "slide down" tumble in a line down the page. Tired and contrived are the adjectives that come to mind. While several of the poems attempt to deal with the potential grittiness of urban life, the reliance on a forced sense of drama compromises authenticity. For example, "Turn" reads: "Vials,/Needles,/Beneath my feet,/Broken glass/Littering my street./I turn, turn, turn my back,/See the green grass growing/In the sidewalk crack." The too-cute watercolor and colored-pencil illustrations are disconcertingly sweet and only of middling quality. A few gems are hidden here, but the overall result is just ho-hum.
Alicia Eames, New York City Public Schools
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Ages 2-6. Simple poems and bright, cheerful pictures show children having fun in the city. There's a touch of sadness--a friend's grandma was mugged; a sweet bag lady dreams on a park bench--but generally the tone is upbeat, with a smiling multiethnic cast playing stickball, skipping rope, watching bugs on the sidewalk, and stretching up and up and up like skyscrapers. A concrete poem has fun with the child's viewpoint of ME on the sidewalk surrounded by crowds of legs everywhere. Unlike Walter Dean Myers' Harlem (1997), Peter Sis' Madlenka (2000), and other far-reaching city picture books, there's no sense of a particular neighborhood or of individual people. Here the appeal is much lighter, as pleasant as a greeting card. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Marshall Cavendish Corp/Ccb
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0761450793
• ISBN 13: 9780761450795
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Flavin Teresa