Night Garden: Poems From The World Of Dreams - Hardcover

Wong, Janet S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689826176 ISBN 13: 9780689826177

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry, 2000

Synopsis

Offers a beautifully illustrated collection of fifteen poems for young readers.

About this title

About the Author:

Janet S. Wong is the author of more than a dozen picture books and poetry collections. Her work includes Night Garden: Poems from the World of Dreams, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book, and Knock on Wood: Poems About Superstitions, both illustrated by Julie Paschkis, as well as Grump, a Charlotte Zolotow Award Highly Commended Book, illustrated by John Wallace. Janet lives with her family in Medina, Washington.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 3-6-In the title poem, Wong compares the bed in which dreams happen with the tangled roots and blooms of a garden bed. The 14 poems that follow are about the people who appear in dreams, eating, swimming, flying, running, and falling. The poems use sound qualities-repetition, alliteration, and occasional rhyme-to capture each dream. Even poems about nightmares and anxieties are couched in gentle language that evokes wonder and thoughtfulness rather than fear. Paschkis's paintings highlight the gardening metaphor. The selections are set against background frames of earth-toned colors, filled with animals, humans, and plants reminiscent of the organic creatures of Hieronymus Bosch. The frames are symmetrically balanced to enclose a small painting on the left-hand page and a similarly shaped space for the poem on the right. Pictures of children of many cultural backgrounds add to the universal quality of the book, as does the last poem, "There Is a Place," which suggests that a storyteller lies inside each of us and comes out as we sleep. Children will enjoy capturing their own dreams and giving them shape and meaning after they have experienced these poems. This is a particularly fine collection for libraries in which young writers and painters are encouraged.
Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0689826176
• ISBN 13: 9780689826177
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Paschkis Julie