Children's Literature
- Jan Lieberman
Lee Bennett Hopkins provides emerging readers delightful poetry that they can read and savor independently. In Blast Off! Poems about Space, for example, Brod Bagert's "Children of the Sun", helps children imagine the planets with simple rhymes: "Mercury's small / Almost nothing at all. / Venus is bright and near. / Earth is a place with deep blue seas / And a sky that is blue and clear...." Aileen Fisher, Karla Kuskin, and Eve Merriam are among the well-known poets included in this collection. Melissa Sweet's bright watercolors illustrate all.
Children's Literature
- Jessy Deutsch
These poems, compiled by an acclaimed poet and anthologist, shine a light from every angle on the sun, moon, earth, and stars. Sunbathers, stargazers, and astronauts in waiting will treasure the verses that wonder, honor, and seek to reflect the mystery and beauty of space. Lightness and darkness intersect, competing and complementing each other in poems that celebrate knowledge, possibility, and the accomplishments of humankind while lamenting the uncertainty, carelessness, and our smallness in the universe. A balanced book of thought-provoking images and inspirational reminiscence. An "I Can Read" book.
School Library Journal
Gr 1-3Hopkins's fifth gathering of poetry in easy-reader format seldom lifts readers off the ground. Nine of the 20 selections are simple invitations to appreciate the sun, moon, stars, or falling stars; Jane Yolen's ``Letter to the Moon'' is an apology for the ``mess'' left behind by astronauts; and few readers will be transported by Hopkins's offering: ``A rocket ship/will take you far/to see a crater,/quasar,/star/...Blast off, child/it's/time/for/flight.'' The poems are short, mostly rhymed, and their use of language ranges from the simple lyricism of Ashley Bryan's ``Song''``Sing to the sun/It will listen/And warm your words...Sing to the moon/It will hear/And soothe your cares''to a semantically confusing extract from Joanne Oppenheim's Have You Seen Roads? (Addison-Wesley, 1969; o.p.): ``Wheeless/Wingless/Weightless/Unknown roads in space await us.'' In Sweet's delicate watercolors, children play, dance, or look up contemplatively in a variety of city, country, and extraterrestrial settings. Despite plenty of humor and high spirits, as a tour of the universe this title makes more of a small step than a giant leap.John Peters, New York Public Library
