City Kids

Children's Literature

The streets are alive with the sound of city life in poet Hubbell's celebration of people, places, and things that children can find in the cement jungle. Her free verse and rhymes evoke the varied rhythms of varied people who crowd together in a city and the continuous movement that urban living always brings with it. Sadness (a friend gone away) and joy (an open hydrant in summer) mix in her poems, but, more importantly, imaginative thinking is present everywhere she directs the young reader's gaze. At times, even the shape of a poem on the page gives it substance or makes it almost physically jump off the page. Hubbell loves to plant words like seeds to see how they grow, so she couldn't have chosen better drawings than the perky and playful ones by Cricket artist Flavin to water her thought-provoking words. The poet's message that where life abounds, so does hope, runs through the whole book. Her poems' simplicity (and profundity) will encourage kids to try penning their own—or at least see everything around them with new eyes. That alone makes this volume a valuable stimulant to creative thought and expression in the hands of an inner-city teacher—or any instructor or parent who wants a child to dig deeper in his search for meaning. 2001, Marshall Cavendish,
— Earlene Viano

School Library Journal

Gr 2-4-This collection starts off strong with "The Doing Days," a simple verse that holds the promise of more to come. "The doing days have started./School is done, done, DONE!/Wonder what I'll be doing/Now summertime's begun?" Unfortunately, few of the other poems ring as true. "City Kid" is nine lines long and comprised of the word "legs" repeated over and over again with the word "ME" placed in the middle of the fifth line. In "City Rainbow," the letters in the words "slide down" tumble in a line down the page. Tired and contrived are the adjectives that come to mind. While several of the poems attempt to deal with the potential grittiness of urban life, the reliance on a forced sense of drama compromises authenticity. For example, "Turn" reads: "Vials,/Needles,/Beneath my feet,/Broken glass/Littering my street./I turn, turn, turn my back,/See the green grass growing/In the sidewalk crack." The too-cute watercolor and colored-pencil illustrations are disconcertingly sweet and only of middling quality. A few gems are hidden here, but the overall result is just ho-hum.-Alicia Eames, New York City Public Schools Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.