Laura Purdie Salas

You may ask, "Do we not have enough books about fall/animals getting ready for winter?" and I will answer "No." You can ALWAYS use more fall books, especially if you live somewhere with four seasons (of course, the seasons are getting a bit less seasonal, but we'll enjoy them as long as they are around!).

This new title, written by poet Laura Purdie Salas with sweet illustrations by Claudine Gevry, is a worthy addition to the oevre. Cheerful rhymes march across the pages in short, sweet show more sentences. Hummingbirds are the first animal, with their couplet reading, "Dive into snapdragons. Double your size!/Dine on delectable tropical flies." The book goes on to show a variety of animals preparing for winter, from whales to garter snakes, mice to moose. It ends a bright spread of children playing in the fall leaves and then in the snow. Each spread's couplets are accompanied by a brief sentence about the animal in small type.

Gevry's soft, colorful illustrations show the gentle side of the animal. A cute red fox leaps into the air, but the pounce and catch of her hunting are not shown. Delicately marked gray and yellow garter snakes swirl together, and the whale swallows a giant swirl of bright pink krill. Those chipmunks are way cuter on the page than in real life too! Although the giant heap of food looks about right for what they've collected from my feeders all fall (and summer).

Back matter includes a paragraph on each of three winter survival strategies - migration, hibernation, and toleration and a final paragraph talking about how animals mix and match these different strategies. The next section of back matter gives more in-depth information on each animal from the book, including their winter survival strategy. There is also a glossary.

Verdict: This is a great nonfiction read-aloud, especially for young listeners, with plenty of additional information for teachers or caregivers to use with older kids. A great addition to books about animals getting ready for winter.

ISBN: 9781541529007; Published September 2019 by Milbrook/Lerner; Borrowed from another library in my consortium show less

‘you gasp as I roar,
my mane exploding, sizzling—
lion of the sky!

Haiku meet riddles in this wonderful collection from Laura Purdie Salas. The poems celebrate the seasons and describe everything from an earthworm to a baseball to an apple to snow angels, alongside full-color illustrations.’

Lion of the Sky by Laura Purdie Salas is a charming collection of haiku centered around the seasons, accompanied by gorgeous artwork. The author calls these 'riddle-kus’ because each haiku describes show more a common object using riddle language, including I and me. At the end there's a section detailing how to write riddle-ku, and a section of suggested reading books. I read this with my cubs,cand we all enjoyed it. I've written haiku before, but it's been awhile and these poems inspired me to write poetry again. And my cubs to try for themselves! Recommended for those who love poetry.

***Many thanks to Netgalley & Lerner Publishing for providing an ecopy in exchange for a fair and honest review. show less

BookSpeak! Poems About Books by Laura Purdie Salas is a collection of twenty-one poems that celebrate books in all shapes and forms: their physical properties, the stories within them, and the readers who love them. Each poem is complemented by Josée Bisaillon's clever artwork, which is a mixture of drawings, collage, and digital montage.

Laura Purdie Salas's poems demonstrate a confident, playful relationship with language that makes her poems shine. The poems have a broad range, from tone, show more subject, and rhyme scheme, but all show off the clever wordplay of Salas. In one, an anthropomorphized book is alarmed by his sleepy reader resting her head on his pages; in another, the words on a page are ravens set free, and Salas is not immune to slipping in a clever pun or two in the lines. Some of the poems are crisp, celebrating the adventure of discovering new worlds between the pages of a book, while others are fresh and fun, full of rich ideas and a knowing wink to readers, and still others are muffled, quiet pieces that are bound to make an impression.

Though all the poems are about books, Salas broadly interprets this to mean more than a love of reading, but also the physical properties of books from their covers to their ink, the stories and characters inside them, and the readers, of course, who love them.

Josée Bisaillon's artwork more than aptly showcases what good illustrations can do: beyond working together with the text, they elevate it and add a richness to the already gorgeous poems. Bisailllon experiments, to great effect, with each new poem. The first poem, appropriately, is about the adventure that awaits readers when they open a new book; Bisaillon's collage work has a radio underwater, flowers growing on a cloud, and a tiny dragon breathing flames while cars roll down hills in the background. The effect is dreamlike and perfect for the poem's subject matter. Every page is unique and beautiful, as much a celebration of books as the poems themselves.

One particular standout in this collection is "skywriting", which experiments with typeface and font, and is illustrated beautifully by Bisaillon, who shows a deep understanding of the material. Her illustration echoes the almost haunting mood of the poem, with ravens made out of inkblots, some of which fly off the page, and others who sit curiously on the lines of a page.

BookSpeak! has good-natured humor, joyful celebration, and quiet reflection in its pages, and Bisaillon is the rare illustrator who creates art to reflect the meaning, rather than the syntactical trappings, of poetry. Readers will eagerly make their way through the pages, but after they reach the end, will find that one page that they find themselves coming back to again and again. show less

Mixed media illustrations combined with clever poems about books and reading. It made for a nice change from the darkness of other books I’m reading (or recently finished and can’t stop thinking about how much I hated).