Gr. 3-5, younger for reading aloud. To quiet her granddaughter's fear of the approaching darkness, Grandmother shares what Sky Bear (also known as the Big Dipper) sees and hears through the night. This companion volume to Bruchac's Thirteen Moons on Turtle's Back: A Native American Year of Moons (1992) presents 12 nature stories, each from a different North American Indian tribe, about summer fireflies, blooming cacti, the northern lights, and an old wolf's predawn song. Locker's richly colored paintings capture the mood of each story, from the midnight sun of the Inuit to the seven stars sparkling against a blue-black sky. Similar in format to the earlier book, this offers easily accessible folklore that will appeal to young listeners and readers. Source notes appended. (Reviewed Feb. 1, 1996)039922713XKaren Hutt

From the Mohawk and Missisquoi peoples of the Northeastern United States to the Pima, Cochiti Pueblo, and Navajo peoples of the Southwest to the Subarctic Inuit, these pieces reflect an awe and appreciation for the natural world. Locker's deeply hued paintings burst with the beauty of night across North America as his varied palette easily captures the Lenape's dark eastern woodland sky as well as the vast horizon of the Great Plains. The poems contain many images that will capture children's imaginations. In "Mouse's Bragging Song," from the Great Lakes' Winnebago, one little mouse stands on his hind legs to sing, "Ne-sha-na ma-chi-ni-kgla. . . / I alone can touch the sky! / Yaki-o-o! / Yaki-o-o! / I alone can touch the sky!" Anishinabe children, also from the Great Lakes region, sing a song to the fireflies: "Small white-fire being, / small white-fire being, / let your light / carry me / into sleep." A Cochiti Pueblo story explains that stars are scattered across the sky because a little girl traveling from the underworld became curious about what she carried in her heavy white cotton bag. When she opened it, the stars escaped to the sky, and only a few stars remained to become patterns, or constellations. The poems provide an imaginative introduction to American Indian folklore and offer teachers a fruitful point of departure for classroom discussion. ellen fader H Vy Higginsen, Selector This Is My Song!: A Collection of Gospel Music for the Family (Intermediate) Illustrated by Brenda Joysmith. Musical arrangements by Wesley Naylor. This handsome volume offers insight into the history of a culture as well as a particular style of music with insistent appeal to a wide audience. Thirty selections from the gospel repertory, chosen by the producer, writer, and director of the gospel musical Mama, I Want to Sing, are provided, with authentic music arrangements for piano and voice as well as notations for guitar chords. The collection is further enhanced with appealing realistic images, primarily of young singers. The predominance of soft blues adds a subtle ethereal quality without seeming artificial. A thoughtful, succinct introduction explains the origins and development of gospel music and differentiates between gospel music and spirituals. A "gospel photo album" extends the concepts presented in the preceding introduction by relating them to specific performers, including Whitney Houston. The organizing principle of the book is further underscored by the commentaries that precede each selection. More than simple descriptions, they set the music in a context that heightens its effect, as in the notes for the lullaby "Jesus Loves Me," which traces its origins to the nineteenth-century novel Say and Seal by Anna and Susan Warner. A tribute to a culture, a people, and a heritage, this book touches the heart and enlarges the spirit. m.m.b. H Langston Hughes The Block (Older) Illustrated by Romare Bearden. Selected by Lowery S. Sims and Daisy Murray Voigt. Introduction by Bill Cosby. Although the picture-book format suggests a younger audience, the poetry selected to accompany Romare Bearden's collage tribute to Harlem is more attuned to the comprehension of older readers. In this visual age, the conjoining of two titans of American culture not only offers new insights into their individual talents but also awakens an awareness of the roots from which their inspiration flowered. The six-panel collage is reproduced on the title page; on the pages that follow, individual sections are presented, with pivotal details extracted to illuminate a particular poem. "Testimonial," for example, which accompanies a picture of the Sunrise Baptist Church, is followed by "Madam's Calling Cards," illustrated with a detail of the panel that works well as a portrait of Madam Alberta K. Johnson, who ordered calling cards because she "hankered to see [her] name in print" and specified that the printer eschew Old English or Roman type for "American" because "American's better." Elegantly designed with bold graphics and arresting color, this compilation commands attention; it is as vibrant as its subject. m.m.b. Shirley Hughes, Author-Illustrator Rhymes for Annie Rose (Picture Book) In lilting verses and joyous illustrations we meet Annie Rose and her world. From our first introduction - when Annie's big brother Alfie draws her picture, "Two brown eyes, / One pink nose, / Ten busy fingers, / Ten pink toes" - we are enchanted by this toddler. She in turn introduces her toys, splashes in puddles on rainy days, and gets all sticky at teatime. Sometimes she goes out in the stroller with her mother, rides piggyback on her father's shoulders, or visits Grandma, but most often she plays with Alfie. They play finger and toe games with shoes and socks happily discarded, have pretend tea parties under the table, and hide in a secret place in the hollow trunk of an old knobby tree. Hughes's familiar illustrations of rough-and-tumble, apple-cheeked children fill every page, bringing life to the verses. After all the fun and games are over, the collection ends appropriately with both children tucked into bed with a lullaby. Young readers and listeners will welcome this addition to Shirley Hughes's sensitive portrayals of childhood. h.b.z. Gary Soto Canto Familiar (Intermediate) Illustrated by Annika Nelson. In this companion volume to the widely acclaimed Neighborhood Odes (Harcourt), Gary Soto continues his reveries in poems that illuminate the minutiae of everyday childhood experience. Some of these recollections refer specifically to his own Mexican-American boyhood, as in "Papi's Menudo," in which a child lovingly observes his father eating - "He tears a piece / Of tortilla / And dips into his menudo, / Medicine on Sunday / When he worked / With both hands / On Saturday" - or in the poem that announces "Spanish is a matter / Of your abuelo / And his compa / Chuckling about their younger days / While playing checkers / Under the grape arbor, / Their faces lined / And dark as the earth / At their feet." But more often, the poems describe moments that will spark recognition in any child - the sudden notion to put shoes on the wrong feet and coats on backward and run around in the yard, the thrill of getting gold stars in school for the right answers, or the embarrassment of locking one's wrists in plastic handcuffs and not being able to find the key: "I think of praying, / But who is the saint of / Third Graders in Handcuffs?" One delightfully perceptive verse touches on the dual pleasure of eating and reading. "What is better than / This sweet dance / On the tongue, / And this book / That pulls you in?" Marked by short, point-blank phrasing and unrhymed vernacular, the poems manage to bring beauty and meaning to every child's life. n.v. Elizabeth Spires With One White Wing: Puzzles in Poems and Pictures (Younger) Illustrated by Erik Blegvad. Here is a rarity: a handsomely produced, artful book of riddles whose solutions are easily within the reach of the average five- to seven-year-old. An author of several volumes of poetry for adults, Elizabeth Spires has, with unusual facility, shifted her focus to children. She has composed a number of simple riddles whose answers can be found within Erik Blegvad's watercolor vignettes. The first entry - "Two hands hold me. / Two feet avoid me. / Jump! / Or I'll trip you up" - is illustrated with a colorful playground scene in which children are engaged in a number of activities, among them jumping rope. Another states: "My life is as long / as an evening. / The older I am, / the shorter I am / until I am nothing" and is represented by a cozy, darkened scene in which an old woman sips tea at a bedside table, while a circle of light is emitted by a single burning candle. If careful scrutiny of the pictures doesn't produce the answer, the solution to each riddle appears upside-down on the page. Young children will delight in this word game they can master, and the book will be especially welcomed by any adult who needs a backup for a dog-eared copy of John Ciardi's classic I Met a Man (Houghton). n.v. Judith Viorst Sad Underwear and Other Complications: More Poems for Children and Their Parents (Intermediate) Illustrated by Richard Hull. It has been more than a decade since the publication of If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries (Atheneum), the companion volume to this collection of poems. Now an entirely new generation of readers is at hand to discover and be entertained by both books. As is true of the earlier volume, many of the verses take that same pleasure in the ridiculous that makes the children's poetry of Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky so popular. Although a few of the poems - particularly the ones that feature fairy-tale characters - are more serious in intent and sophisticated in tone, the collection as a whole is clearly meant to be chuckled over and no doubt will succeed with today's middle-grade audiences. Index. n.v. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Gr 1-6‘A companion to Bruchac's Thirteen Moons on Turtle's Back (Philomel, 1992). In that title, a grandfather shared the moon's legends with his grandson. In this book, a grandmother relates the legend of Sky Bear to her granddaughter. Sky Bear (also known as the Big Dipper) circles the Earth each night, and these 12 poems tell of what she sees and hears. Each one is from a different tribe: Mohawk, Anishinabe, Pima, Missisquoi, Winnebago, Cochiti Pueblo, Lenape, Chumash, Inuit, Lakota, Navajo, and Pawnee. Bruchac has once again compiled a thoughtful collection that eloquently bears out the theme of unity among all creatures. The selections display a wide range of emotions. Some are pensive meditations; others resound with hopeful energy. ``Mouse's Bragging Song,'' a whimsical delight, is the arrogant boast of a little creature who thinks he alone can touch the sky. Locker's luminous oil paintings add detail and depth. They glow with brilliant sky colors: sunset reds, twilight purples. The Earth Under Sky Bear's Feet lives up to the high standards of Bruchac's earlier works, and is a worthy addition.‘Marilyn Taniguchi, Santa Monica Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Thirteen poems and songs gathered from as many traditions, mostly about--despite the subtitle ``Native American Poems of the Land''--stars, spirits, and the sky. Many of the selections contain references to the Sky Bear, a constellation also known as the Big Dipper that, Bruchac (The Story of the Milky Way, p. 1185, etc.) claims, has been seen as a bear by cultures on three continents. Locker's awesome landscape technique has seldom worked to better effect: Skies flame at dawn or sunset over dramatic vistas that seem more real than the indistinct, turned-away human figures, while shadows and rich blends of blue and purple give the evening scenes an air of mystery. An engrossing companion to Thirteen Moons On Turtle's Back (1992). (notes) (Picture book/folklore. 9-12)