A Mirror to Nature: Poems about Reflection

by Jane Yolen, Jason Stemple (Photographer)

Overview

Jane Yolen and Jason Stemple join forces again in this new winning combination of poems and photos. Water possesses reflective qualities, creating fascinating patterns and doubled images that allow us to see things in new ways. Celebrated writer Jane Yolen and photographer Jason Stemple capture these natural beauties in twelve thoughtful poems and breathtaking pictures in this winner of the John Burroughs Nature Books for Young Readers Award. Watery reflections provide an appropriate backdrop for Jane's musings on nature, such as a raccoon swimming with his reflected self, the water-jagged legs of a snowy egret, and the double danger of a hungry alligator at the edge of a swamp. Jason's photographs offer whimsical peeks at the natural world we rarely chance to see. This artistic collaboration gives readers a unique opportunity to contemplate their world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684372782
Publisher:	Astra Publishing House
Publication date:	03/12/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.13(d)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Jane Yolen has received numerous awards for her writing, including the Regina Medal, the Society of Children's Book Writers Award, and the Christopher Medal. Her books have been translated into more than twelve languages. She lives in St. Andrews, Scotland and Hatfield, Massachusetts.

Jason Stemple is a freelance photographer. He has provided the photographs for a number of poetry books for young readers, including Fine Feathered Friends and Wild Wings, both written by his mother, Jane Yolen. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

Editorial Reviews

"Italicized captions on each poem's page add information about the pictured animal, making this a good volume - along with other titles by this mother-son team - for teachers wanting to connect science and poetry." —Kirkus Reviews



"Drawn by the rich play in words and pictures, kids will see reflections, strange and beautiful, in the natural world." —Booklist



* "This collection is a gem. . . . Stemple's photographs startle the reader with the extraordinary beauty of the ordinary things, and Yolen's poems are laced with humor (sometimes wry, sometimes overt) and with environmental undercurrents." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

From the Publisher

Stemple's stunning pictures find a mirror everywhere they look.
—The New York Times

Julie Just

Pairing lyrical poems and crisp photography to great effect, this collection is a gem. Each poem contains Yolen's response to a series of photographs that portray living things reflected in water. Stemple's photographs startle the reader with the extraordinary beauty of the ordinary things, and Yolen's poems are laced with humor (sometimes wry, sometimes overt) and with environmental undercurrents. Beside a portrait of blue wood storks, she offers, "How to double your population?/ Stand in water smooth as glass./ This is not mere speculation; Check the wood storks by the grass." In "Jaws x 2 x 80," an alligator's jaws are seen twice, "One pair/ is real,/ and one/ a reflection./ But I'll never/ give either/ a closer/ inspection." The book's design-poem across from photograph, with bands of solid color along opposing edges-mimics the photographs' inherent symmetry, while leaving room for brief information about nature. The images and words resonate-readers will find themselves responding to Yolen's introductory invitation to "linger over these photos, contemplate the poems, see if together or separately they make you think again, make you reflect." Ages 10-12. (Apr.)

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Publishers Weekly

Gr 3-5

The mother-son duo offers another book of concept poetry, this time focusing on reflections found in nature. Yolen's dozen short verses are paired with Stemple's arresting photographs of raccoons, alligators, coyotes, and a number of water birds. As with Color Me a Rhyme (2000), Count Me a Rhyme (2006), and Shape Me a Rhyme (2007, all Boyds Mills), this book is an excellent complement to nature studies. As the author notes in her introduction, to reflect on something is to give it a second look and, perhaps, to see it in a new light. The final poem, "Crazy Legs," finds a snowy egret against a background of blue, its stick legs distorted in its watery reflection: "The egret's/Stark perfection/Now marked/By strange bisection./So bent, this odd/Direction/Demands a new/Inspection." Teachers and students should find this thoughtful combination of wordplay, nature factoids, and photographs worthwhile.-Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA

School Library Journal

The title of this volume comes from Hamlet's instructions to the players that the "purpose of playing" is to mirror nature. And so is the purpose of the nature photographer and poet here. Stemple has photographed reflections in nature: seven wood storks with seven reflections, an alligator with a reflection that creates the illusion of a double jaw, a solitary cockle made less alone by its reflection. Yolen's brief poems personifying the animals face the full-page photographs like the reflections they describe. A note from the author encourages readers to let the photographs and poems be a cause for reflection, but the intended fun of the poems is, at times, undercut by the forced whimsy: "This perplexing little frog / Has popped up on a thrown-out bottle. / What does this mean? Perhaps a lotle." The pages and photographs are vibrant and lively, the poems best for reading aloud. Italicized captions on each poem's page add information about the pictured animal, making this a good volume-along with other titles by this mother-son team-for teachers wanting to connect science and poetry. (Poetry. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews