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By:
Betsy Bird,
on 3/6/2011
Blog:
A Fuse #8 Production
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2011 poetry,
Megan Halsey,
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Tracie Vaughn Zimmer,
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Cousins of Clouds: Elephant Poems
By Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
Illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy
Clarion Books (an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-618-90349-8
Ages 4-9
On shelves now
“Do you have any elephant books?” This is an easy one. The children’s librarian doesn’t have to think too hard about it. Just walk on over to the right section of the non-fiction, find the correct Dewey Decimal number, grab the books, and there you go. Happy kid. Happy librarian. Of course it’s not always that easy. Recently, and this is actually true, I’ve been encountering kids who want picture books about elephants. So my library whipped up an Elephant Picture Book List that includes all the great elephant related stories (Babar, Ella, Horton, Elephant and Piggie, you name it). It wasn’t until I got my digits on Tracie Vaughn Zimmer’s latest book of poems Cousins of Clouds, though, that I realized that there’s a middle ground between these pachyderm-related sections. I mean, what if you have a kid that wants a picture book about elephants but also wants some facts along the way? Whither goes the librarian? Cousins of Clouds is sort of a little nonfiction/poetry godsend then. Chock full of interesting elephant facts as well as cool poems, the book bridges the gap between fiction and nonfiction beautifully.
It’s hard to wrap your head around an elephant, let alone your arms. Here we have creatures weighing between 6,000 and 16,000 pounds. Animals that sometimes starve in the streets of cities and sometimes visit the bones of their deceased. In twenty-five poems of varying lengths Tracie Vaughn Zimmer takes us into the world of the elephant. You’ll see them walking down streets with cars and appearing on art from a variety of countries. You’ll see how they care for their young or are incorporated into the body of Ganesh. Accompanying each poem is a small factual message that gives additional information about the elephants being discussed. The end of the book also contains a list of recommended books “For further elephant reading” if kids are interested in knowing more about these majestic, gigantic animals.
There is a trend these days to integrate different subject areas in schools and textbooks so that kids can see how everything is connected. So, for example, a fifth grader might be encouraged to read about the history of the Dust Bowl, read the novel
0 Comments on Review of the Day: Cousins of Clouds by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer as of 1/1/1900
Illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy
$16.99, ages 4-8, 32 pages
You may be fond of elephants, but after reading this beguiling book of poetry, you'll wish you could save every one.
Zimmer's words and Halsey and Addy's pictures bring elephants into greater focus and heighten our respect for them, in a whimsical, if at times sobering tribute to the world's largest land mammal.
Every two-page spread combines meticulously worded poems and soft, winsome collages, along with torn-edged notes expounding upon the topic of a poem.
In one spread, the profile of a sweet-eyed elephant spans the fold of two pages, its appendages painted to resemble objects they're similar to.
Ears look like "tattered sails," the tail swishes like a "tapered rope" with a "fancy tassel," a sturdy hind leg becomes a Grecian pillar and another is inset with a slipper to suggest lightness of foot.
Though Zimmer never comes out and appeals for help saving elephants, she deepens our understanding of these sapient creatures and asks us to contemplate how humans affect their lives.
In doing so, she skillfully involves us in their plight and makes us feel protective of them.
The title poem, also the first in the book, shows elephants as proud creatures and hints that elephants in their service to humans, though dutiful, yearn to be set free.
Set over a sky of flying elephants, the poem describes a mythical time when elephants had wings and ruled the sky, then fell from grace for thinking themselves too great.
One day a prophet came to share with elephants all that he knew. But as they flew into an elm to listen, the elephants began quarreling over who had a better view of the prophet, and as they jostled around, the tree splintered and crashed to the ground.
The prophet, the only creature on the ground not crushed, was so enraged and disillusioned by their behavior, that he invoked a curse
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