Stardines Swim High Across the Sky: and Other Poems

Ingenious book design pairs with inventive poetry to create this museum-in-a-book of animal poems, featuring unusual critters such as Fountain Lions, Braindeer, and Slobsters. The concept itself is simple: combine a real animal with a quality that fits into the name (Bobcat + Sob = Sobcat, "sad / As a feline can be"). The fun comes in the perfect but unexpected matches Prelutsky makes, such as the Stardines of the title, who "twinkle overhead," or the Jollyfish, "radiant, / Ebullient blobs of mirth." Berger sets up each illustration to look like a diorama in a museum, incorporating found objects, aged paper, and other miscellanea to tag and label the various beasts. The total effect is both whimsical and fascinating, with rich language in the poems and unexpected objects in the pictures to return to over and over again. Prelutsky concludes with (presumably) a little poke at himself in the poem about Bardvarks, who "think they're poets / And persist in writing rhyme" -- but children will be glad he persisted. susan dove lempke