Fairies, Trolls, & Goblins Galore: Poems about Fantastic Creatures - Hardcover

This collection of 17 poems, which lacks the overall pizzazz of Evans and Rogers's previous Weird Pet Poems, features the title fairies, trolls and goblins as well as the less familiar spriggans, banshees and pointed people. Lavish endpapers introduce a dreamy-eyed girl lying in a forest of ferns and jack-in-the-pulpits populated with elfin beings. In Monica Shannon's wry, forthright "How to Tell Goblins from Elves," the girl spies a cheerful goblin baby hanging in a basket and sucking his "pink and podgy foot/ (As human babies do),/ And then they suck the other one,/ Until they're sucking two"; for the sauntering pace of Muriel E. Windram's "The Footstep Fairies," the heroine's flowered tennis shoes attract a troupe of camouflaged sprites who "tug with might and main,/ Till all the little blades of grass/ Are standing straight again." Despite such humor and detail in the verses and artwork, however, both the poems and paintings vary in quality. The imagery can be overly coy--as when a troll is described as "so cute and wise"--and the flood of teensy, itty-bitty descriptors gets repetitive but specific and lively language in the poems also inspires the artist's best work. Ages 4-up. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Wee folk star in a book of prankish poetry that celebrates the mischief and mere presence of inch-high magical and supernatural creatures. An illustrated table of contents introduces 17 poems and defines the fairy folk featured within. A leshy can be small as a blade of grass, a pixie wears green and changes size, a hobgoblin is fond of practical jokes, a spriggan is something of a bodyguard for fairies. Familiar and unknown poems are collected here, from classics such as Rachel Field's ``The Pointed People,'' to contemporary entries by Kristine O'Connell George and Evans herself. The tone of the whole varies from page to page, as the more flowery, rhyming verse coexists with catchier entries such as ``A Gnome Poem,'' containing images of a gnome snuggled under a New Jersey map and on a mousepad or a stowaway troll in ``Backpack Trouble.'' Green, leafy artwork surrounds these magical folk in airy and woodsy settings, casting them as playful, curious, and cuddly. (Picture book/poetry. 5-8) -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.