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Stardines Swim High Across The Sky: And Other Poems (2013)

by Jack Prelutsky(Favorite Author)

3.91 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0062014641 (ISBN13: 9780062014641)

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

Greenwillow Books

review 1: There are so many reviews of this book that I imagine I’m the only one who hasn’t read it! Jack Prelutsky has created “pun-tastic” animals, describing them as only he can in varied poems, with the added bonus of Carin Berger’s beautiful photographed collages set in old wooden cigar boxes. Berger took each poem’s title and content to show how the animals looked and lived. The Harper-Collins site says that 24 exhibits were prepared, but only sixteen are shared in this beautiful book. Examples from the text include the “Chormorants” who do nothing but “toil from sun to sun/They labor over senseless chores/They’re certain must be done.” The illustrated bird, with an apron and cleaning tools held in its feathered hands, looks ready to work!... more I laughed out loud at “Tattlesnake, Tattlesnake” when Prelutsky writes “Truly you’re mean./You’re nosy, annoying/you’re venomous, vile/You don’t mind your business,/We don’t like your style.” Berger gives a snake-like creature with a long horn attached to its face. And my favorite is “Plandas” where we see a panda with a pen, holding a very long paper list, and we read, at the end after numerous other things are said: “They plan to play the saxophone/And form their own brass bands…./But PLANDAS never do these things--/They just keep making plans.” Each poem and illustration is a pleasure, and reading the book will encourage children to invent their own creature and “pun-imal” poem!
review 2: My 2013 Caldecott award nominee goes to, Stardines by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Carin Berger. This is a poetic book that children and adults will both enjoy. The message of the book appears to be about fictional animals, but the personification they are given leads us to belief that the author talks about types of people. For example, plandas, illustrated as pandas, their “plans amount to nothing, for they never see them through”, speaking perhaps of dreamers, who dream but never reach for it. Another example is chormorants who “labor over senseless chores [,] they’re certain must be done.” The cover fools the reader into thinking the stardines are shooting stars, but because of the flow of it and the eye, we clearly see a fish. Thus the illustrator cleverly introduces the book and its characters along with the collage medium. The illustrator includes pronunciation, of these made up names so the reader can recognize the through sound what the author is implying. Also, the illustrator varies in her use of double spread pages, and arranges all the animals in a display fashion, with name tags. The overall feel of the book is antique because of the materials the illustrator chose to work with. For example, she used line paper as background, and older yellow paper. Furthermore, she used various newspapers and magazine clippings in the bodies of her animals, and the accessories she created for them. One newspaper the dates 1908, and there is also a box of rivets with the price of 30 cents. The illustrator use d various techniques like collages, dioramas, and shadow boxes to create all of these characters. She used materials from office and school like: glue, tacks, line paper, type writer font, and cardboard and construction paper. It seems like she also photographed her illustrations, because in the bluffaloes, beneath them a shadow is casted. Overall, Stardines, is a book that deserves to win the Caldecott, for the creatively executed illustrations that enhance the text. The play of word from the author and his poems, are greatly enhanced by his illustrator Carin Berger. less

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