Jane Yolen is a treasure. She’s published hundreds of books (over 400!) for kids, teens, and adults. She’s won many awards, including the top awards in multiple genres– the Caldecott, the Nebula, the World Fantasy Award–and from multiple sources, such as the Jewish Book Award.
I say again, Jane Yolen is a treasure…but Yuck, You Suck! Poems about Animals That SIP, SLURP, SUCK is only okay.
Yolen wrote this book with her daughter, Heidi E.Y. Stemple. Their poems have some lively language, but some of them seem like prose with some description, but with fairly arbitrary line breaks. Some, like “Yuck, You Suck” rhyme, but which lines rhyme shifts around, fighting the rhythm. I’d say the best poem is “Butterfly Puddle Party,” because it is a concrete poem that forms a butterfly shape on the pages.
The theme of sucking or slurping unites the poems: they cover bugs (mosquitos, fleas, butterflies, moths, bees), water creatures (stingrays, remoras, jellyfish) and land creatures (elephants) and birds (pigeons). There are some pages of prose at the end, giving more detail about the creatures (and sources for even more) and vocabulary lists. Because of this, I can see educational libraries (or parents) snapping this book up.
Eugenia Nobati’s illustrations vividly exaggerate these creatures and add facial expressions, giving kids lots to enjoy and connect with.
