In the Spin of Things: Poetry of Motion

by Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Karen Dugan (Illustrator)

Overview

Dazzling wordplay sets young imaginations spinning. Rebecca Kai Dotlich pays poetic tribute to things that shake or slap, whoosh or whirl, swirl or spill in this captivating book of verse. With charming illustrations by Karen Dugan, these twenty-three poems sparkle with clever imagery and crackle with dazzling wordplay. Here's a remarkable collection by a gifted poet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590788288
Publisher:	Astra Publishing House
Publication date:	08/01/2010
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 10.60(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	5 - 7 Years

About the Author

Rebecca Kai Dotlich has written more than a dozen children's books, including Lemonade Sun: And Other Summer Poems, an IRA-CBC Children's Choice, and Castles: Old Stone Poems, co-written with J. Patrick Lewis. She lives in Carmel, Indiana.

Karen Dugan has worked on more than twenty-five books, eight with Boyds Mills Press, including If I Had a Snowplow by Jean L.S. Patrick and Tea Party Today: Poems to Sip and Savor by Eileen Spinelli. She lives in North Attleboro, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

"Colors are bright without being garish and there's a sense of joy throughout. A different way of viewing the world around us."—Kirkus Reviews

"Colorful illustrations full of swirling movement enhance the playfulness of the verses. These imaginative poems could be used to inspire children's own creative writing."—School Library Journal

"[T]his exuberant physical romp is grounded in realism and the joy of language."—Booklist

From the Publisher

In this collection, a wide variety of mostly everyday items are described in terms of their motion. Cereal, scissors, and rubber bands, as well as carousels, waterfalls, and helicopters are examined and described visually and aurally. The reader is presented with vivid visual images, but it is the sounds that the objects make as they move that give life to the poems. The wind chimes are "tin ballerinas on a tangle of string," but they are also "sweet voices of chattering ghosts." Ice cubes plop and make a "crackling, clinking chime" as we "watch them bounce and belly flop." Most of the poems are on a single illustrated page and there are a few double-page spreads. Dugan selects just the right perspective to spotlight each subject's motion. Colors are bright without being garish and there's a sense of joy throughout. A different way of viewing the world around us. (Poetry. 6-10)

Kirkus Reviews