All Eyes on the Pond

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Giving the reader a dramatic, pond-dweller's-eye view, Rosen and Leonard memorably depict a freshwater ecology. On each spread, a lush, fluidly composed acrylic painting places the reader at the sight line of a different representative of pondlife--snail, bat, ant, dragonfly, snapping turtle, mallard and so forth (12 in all). Rosen, meanwhile, relays each creature's perspective via not altogether buoyant verse (``The snapping turtle sometimes sees / the muddy deep, sometimes the trees, / and sometimes nothing but inside /the painted shell where it can hide''). Bursts of lyricism (``The water strider walks the shine / where air and water form a line'') occasionally boost the impact of the text to the same level as the thoroughly striking art. Ages 4-7. (May)

School Library Journal

K-Gr 4-An introduction, in gently lilting verse, to the behavior and interdependence of various pond creatures, and an intimate look at the habitat in which they all live. Leonard's beautiful, borderless acrylic art fills page after double-page spread. It takes readers sloshing through the mud with the snapping turtle, climbing the spider's web, roaming the underground tunnels of the ant, or scooting backward with the crawdad. Soft blues, greens, and warm browns delight the eye. This is the same approach to his subjects that the artist took in illustrating Margaret Wise Brown's Under the Sun and the Moon (Hyperion, 1993). This time, he presents different views of the pond, along with an insert closeup of each animal's unique eye(s). The final spread shows a human eye that contains all of the pond creatures and states, ``Come closer. What's your view? All the creatures watch for you.'' An appealing work and worthwhile addition to nonfiction collections.-Dot Minzer, North Barrington School, Barrington, IL

Stephanie Zvirin

Leonard's striking illustrations are what children will notice first. Each luminous acrylic painting focuses on a different denizen of a pond environment. Insets in each double-page spread, beginning with one picturing a person's eyes, depict the creature whose world we enter. We see a water strider walking delicately on "the shine where air and water forms a line," a turtle on the bank, ants in an underground tunnel, a bluegill in the pond. Four rhyming lines of text identify and characterize the animal, but children will need to have their wits about them or lines such as "To what's ahead, the crawdad's blind / It only sees what's left behind" may be a bit puzzling. An appended note about each animal would have helped, but since none is provided, adults should count on filling in a few nature facts. Even so, this peek at pond fauna has been accomplished with considerable cleverness and great visual flair.