This gathering of humorous poetry and fascinating facts should be welcomed as a companion to Bulion and Evans’ previous collaboration, Hey There, Stink Bug! (2006)-even the surprise among the school of krill on the endpapers will make readers smile. Shape poems introduce the violet snail and a swarm of krill. These poems lend themselves to reading aloud, and many are short and catchy enough to be easily memorized. Concluding with a helpful glossary, a clear explanation of the poetic forms that points out rhymes, patterns and beats, suggested further resources and acknowledgements, this is an ideal title for cross-curricular connections. This attractive small volume is illustrated with hand-colored linoleum block prints set on a blue-green background that darkens page by page as the reader descends. “Dive In!” introduces the habitat, and, on the last page, “Hooray for the Sea and the ROV” celebrates the ocean and the vehicles humans use to explore its deepest parts. One piece calls for two voices, a leopard sea cucumber and an emperor shrimp. Kids after some highbrow ha-ha’s will find them here.įrom snapping shrimp with bubble-shooting claws to the Osedax worm that digests whalebones on the ocean floor, intriguing and unusual sea creatures are introduced in this collection of 18 engaging poems written in a variety of forms. A paragraph or two of identification and explanation follow each poem. Evans’ humor, while silly and offbeat, often relies on rather refined wordplay (“If I were a polar bear, / … / I’d go with the floe”) or, as in the case of the albatross, on sophisticated literary and cultural allusions: “Of course I’d be cross / if I were an albatross! / What did I do? What the heck? / Why hang me around your neck?” As he curates his menagerie, Evans takes occasion to employ a variety of poetic forms in portraying both the common and the unusual, with mixed results-going so far at one point as to both use and invoke the ghazal form to describe the gazelle: “I’d live like a poem, headlong and heartstrong, / and wear a ghazal, if I were a gazelle.” Throughout, Pope’s bold, directly expressive pen-and-ink illustrations amplify Evans’ wry message, as in “If I Were a Hippo,” where Pope underscores Evans’ apt depiction with a sketch of a hippo holding a wee umbrella that barely shields its eyes.
Posing the question, “If I weren’t a human, / what else could I be?” Evans playfully answers with possibilities ranging from the “one-celled amoeba” and exotic narwhal to the fanciful jackalope, unicorn, even a vampire.
A light poetic survey of the animal kingdom and then some.
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