Is Somewhere Always Far Away?: Poems About Places (A Bill Martin Book) - Hardcover

PreSchool-Grade 2-A collection of poems originally published in 1967 (Holt) and newly illustrated. The "place" in the subtitle means city, country, home, and the land of make-believe, but it also stretches to include everyday objects and concepts that are part of a young child's experience. The 24 poems consider such things as roads, bumblebees, a bus stop, shoelaces, the difficulty of keeping a secret, and the coziness of nighttime. Jacobs uses ordinary language and conventional rhymes. "A grasshopper said/ To a caterpillar furry/'I can't wait for you/I'm really in a hurry.'" Each page features a different background color with cut-paper illustrations in bright primary hues. The humans come in a variety of ages and skin tones and are reminiscent of Bert and Ernie. Indeed, everything in the book seems predictable and uninspired, and it screams "classroom unit." Even the illustrations seem to be tailor-made for a bulletin board-easy to copy and cut out for a lesson on "Our City" or "Our Home."-Ellen D. Warwick, Winchester Public Library, MA
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