Song of the water Boatman

 

 

Title: Song of the water Boatman  

Author: Joyce Sidman

Illustrator: Beckie Prange 

Age: 8-12

 

The poems are wonderful, the illustrations are beautiful and each poem is accompanied by informational text with facts about the featured creature. The poems manage to include some of these factual bits as well as conveying interesting images of the insect or animal. The combination of words and images takes us through the world of a pond. The serenity of the still water, the diving duck, the darting dragonfly. In "Spring Splashdown" the text leads our eyes to fall right down the page with the wood ducklings as they tumble from the nest for their first swim. The ominous, carnivorous diving beetle --"If it moves, it is mine"--stares menacingly at us and breaks out of the illustration's frame. "In the Depths of the Summer Pond" is part shape poem, with the text drifting lower and lower across the page, against the lush backdrop of the submerged community. Closing with the passage of the seasons and a turtle digging into the mud for the winter, the book holds an entire season of life within its covers.