The book is very simple with lush illustrations expressing what it is to be filled with wonder and awe as a child, and how one’s imagination “Can see in a daisy in the grass/Angels and archangels pass”  or “See outer space become so small/That the hand of a child could hold it all.”    I’m not surprised at all that Page was requested to write this book as she is a poet most fond of the mystical paradoxes of life, some of which are hard to grasp for children.  My daughter, for one, found this book perplexing;  however, I enjoyed exposing her to it nonetheless — call it paradoxical parenting!  That some things indeed, are a mystery is part of this book’s appeal.

For more on P.K. Page, you might want to check out the Canadian literary journal The Malahat Review‘s P.K. Page: A Tribute , but I do also recommend her books.  The Glass Air was one of my favorites in my undergraduate years.

This week’s Poetry Friday host is Elaine at Wild Rose Reader.

My daughter selected this book and enjoyed reading it aloud to me.  It’s a numbers primer using the old convention of …and then there were ‘four’ … kind of phrasing and rhyming but it was delightfully done.   Illustrator Blackall’s wombats were a whimsy of furry rotundness wearing beads and polka-dotted underwear.  Along with the wombat walkabout story, the authors have provided a glossary of Australian words for readers to get a sense of the language.   “Wombat”, “kookaburra” and  “billabong” were among my favorite words.

Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Elaine at Wild Rose Reader.

The Poet Pencil
by Jesús Carlos Soto Morfín, translated by Judith Infante

Once upon a time a pencil wanted to write
poetry but it didn’t have a point. One day a boy
put it into the sharpener, and in place of a point,
a river appeared.

Wild Rose Reader is brimming with poetic activity as host of this week’s Poetry Friday round-up. Check it out.

Not only that, but Janet and Elaine have also invited readers of the interview to write their own poems including the words ring, drum and blanket, as this used to be one of Myra’s homework assignments. You can still join in – and if you need inspiration, you can read Janet and Elaine’s own offerings; there’s a great poem called Dragon Boat Festival by Diane Davis; and Cloudscome, Miss Rumphius Effect and Writing and Ruminating have all taken the challenge in wonderful and very different directions too.

To help you celebrate, here are a couple of new books we can recommend…

Grace Lin has a sequel just out to her delightful Year of the Dog – called, appropriately enough, Year of the Rat. We’ll have our own review of it soon, in the meantime, you can read what Grace herself says about it here.

You can read here about another new book by Grace, this time a picture-book called Bringing in the New Year. At the end of that post, Wild Rose Reader gives some good “Lunar New Year” links too.

And here are some more Chinese New Year picture books reviewed by PaperTigers:
The Year of the Rat: Tales from the Chinese Zodiac by Oliver Chin, illustrated by Miah Alcorn,;
The Great Race / The Story of the Chinese Zodiac by Dawn Casey, illustrated by Anne Wilson;
The Day the Dragon Danced by Kay Haugaard, illustrated by Carolyn Reed Barritt.

Do you have any special favorites you’d like to share with us?

…And a PS – do have a look at Grace Lin’s blog to read about her trip to China last month – there are some great photos too.