From the Publisher
What do you like about spring?
Longer days?
Blooming flowers?
April Fools'?
Cool spring showers?
What do you not like about spring?
Spring-cleaning?
Insect swarms?
Mud, mud, mud?
Thunderstorms?
This collection of poems and paintings captures the freshness and promise of spring, whether it comes in like a lion or a lamb. A companion to the highly praised Winter Eyes, Summersaults, and Autumnblings, Handsprings completes Douglas Florian's seasonal celebration.
Publishers Weekly
Completing his cycle of seasonally-linked poems (Winter Eyes; Summersaults; Autumnblings), Douglas Florian presents Handsprings, suitably mud-spattered and unpredictable. He runs the gamut from "What I Love About Spring" ("Caterpillars creep,/ Peepers peep") to "What I Hate About Spring" ("Bumblebees/ Skinned knees"), including such defining characteristics as "The March Wind" ("The March wind howls. The March wind growls"). With his neatly framed watercolors of buds and raindrops, this cheery collection brims with "silly daffodilly" reminders that winter doesn't last forever. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz
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Children's Literature
Just in time to welcome spring, Florian has completed his seasonal cycle of poems that already include Winter Eyes, Summersaults, and Autumblings. His verses are concise, frequently fun, and always filled with the love of and play with words begging to be read aloud. Here he celebrates colors, sounds, activities, and the feel of spring, including March winds and April Fool's. Sometimes the words march down or around the page; the letters of "Rain Reign" fall like showers. The watercolor and color pencil illustrations of varying sizes that accompany these innocent verses are also playful and full of youthful enthusiasm. No backgrounds are needed; no distracting details keep us from the direct appeal of a mouth tipped open to catch the dripping rain, or the jumping lift of a youngster as if from a coiled spring, or a grin so wide it needs three separate frames to contain it, or a daisy coming around a corner smiling at us, "Spring is one big daisy chain...Spring is silly daffodilly." And Florian helps us open our arms to it. 2006, Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins, and Ages 5 to 10.
School Library Journal
Gr 3-5-Florian continues to churn out clever poems accompanied by his spirited watercolor and colored-pencil artwork. Illustrations include a girl skateboarding on a green leaf, a boy doing handsprings, and a daisy with a smiling face poking around a brick wall. He employs lots of playful phrases: "Spring is great/For growing grass./Spring has zing/And spring has sass" and "The March wind rattles/And skedaddles." There is one nimble concrete poem titled "Rain Reign" and another selection called "Ten Things To Do When It Rains": "-Surf the net./Build a jet./Or go outside and get wet." The format will be familiar to fans of Summersaults (2002), Autumnblings (2003), and Winter Eyes (1999, all HarperCollins), with plenty of white space framing muddy, childlike illustrations and simple, clear print. These sprightly odes shout out the poet's affection for the season and conclude his well-received quartet. Most libraries will want to purchase this entertaining suite.-Kirsten Cutler, Sonoma Library, CA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Florian completes a quartet of seasonal poetic explorations with this thoughtful but humorous look at the joys of spring. The 29 rhyming poems cover many of the traditional aspects of springtime: baseball, rain and mud, planting seeds, April Fool's Day and spring cleaning, as well as many views of the changes in the natural world. Several poems use rhyming couplets with a short line length of just two or three words ("Polliwog. / Big bull frog."), showing the author's skill at succinct expression. Other poems use creative type treatments (such as streams of vertical words for a poem on rain) to vary the presentation. Florian's understated illustrations in watercolor and colored pencil provide touches of droll humor in his signature style. Teachers in the early elementary grades will find this volume a breath of fresh air for poetry studies in the last months of the school year. (Poetry. 5-9)
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