Shadow Play

A collection of haiku devoted to night-related themes

On the title page of this artful collection of haiku, a boy and his dog lean out the window, ostensibly to listen to the sounds of the night. At each turn of the page, three loosely related haiku are paired with a dark pastel illustration filled with intriguing angles and shadows. Like the work of Gary Blythe or Chris Van Allsburg, Greene's (Backyard Bear) compositions startle with their skewed perspectives and bold designs. Unfortunately, the text succeeds neither as a body of haiku nor as a story: the traditional haiku form is not used to its advantage but as if it were a prosaic stanza in a narrative poem ("the cat wakes me up/ chasing his tail/ in the dark"). On the other hand, the links between the poems are not always evident, as when haiku about nightfall, morning dew and chasing evening fireflies inexplicably interrupt the description of the snowstorm that occurs as the boy sleeps. Poems about a fortune-teller and the boy's grandparents watching an eclipse seem to pad the pages rather than form an integral part of the boy's thoughts or dreams. Ultimately, a disappointment. Ages 6-11.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Harter (Stages and Views, not reviewed) evokes nighttime in a series of haiku poems that capture its sounds, shadows, and muted colors. As a child falls asleep, he remembers (imagines? dreams?) of nighttime excursions, lunar eclipses, shooting stars, the Milky Way. On a country road ``all the stars pour through/the car radio...by the roadside/one cow lifts her face/into our headlights.'' At a circus, a fortuneteller ``traces the line in my palm to a star.'' And on a moonless night there are ``as many crickets singing/as the stars.'' Drawn in off-color hues that bring to mind the forest greens and maroons of 1940s cars and styles, Greene's rich pastel-work brings Harter's modern haiku back to another time, and another childhood. The night is alive with movement, and with light, in this stunning book. (Poetry/Picture book. 6-11) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.