Poetrees

A Beautiful book

Florian focuses his talent for poetry and illustration on trees as he celebrates their beauty, uniqueness, and importance in this collection of eighteen poems that are rich with his signature wordplay: "lovely leaves/leave me in awe."Florian's enthusiasm for his subject is clearly demonstrated in the first stanza of his poem, Coconut Palm : I'm nuts about the coconut./I'm cuckoo for the coco./I'm crazed for this amazing nut./For coco I am loco.There's the familiar oak and weeping willow, the largest - Sequoia and the oldest - Bristlecone pine, as well as the exotic Scribbly Gum, Baobab, and Monkey Puzzle Tree. Florian includes poems about roots, seed, bark, leaves, and even tree rings in this thoughtful look at one of earth's most valuable resources. A Glossatree that provides information about the subjects of his verses completes the book.Florian turns his book ninety degrees to allow for large, vertical double-page spreads for his illustrations worked in mixed media on brown bag paper.

I'm a little mixed on my feelings for this book. Conceptually I think it works better than it should considering the contents. The style of the book itself is the biggest draw and makes up for some of the lazy poems included. I couldn't help but get the feeling like Douglas Florian was phoning it in for half of the poems. Some of them are smart and feel fresh and then others feel half-hearted and hollow. I liked the artwork, and the way the poems are written (style-wise) is interesting (albeit a tad distracting at times). I liked the fact that the book opened like a calendar, although I must admit that it can be somewhat awkward to hold and turn pages. I'm not sure just what the purpose of the book is supposed to be. If it is to encourage imagination, it half works. If it is to educate then it half works. Some of the poems are awfully short and somewhat pointless. Poems like `The Seed' are short yet sweet, and the design of the page is a talking point as well. Poems like `Oak' are just bland and void of any real `effort' on the part of Florian to make this subject interesting and engaging. It's hard to hate on this book though, because it is very pretty to look at and for a younger age it is probably appropriate. I can see this being used in kindergarten, but I can't see it really making much of an impact on older children who could probably come up with more insightful and more `colorful' poems on their own. I'll give this a B-. I wanted this to be better, but overall I can't say that it is a failure; it's more of a mixed bag.

I'm a fan of Florian's previous poetry collections, especially Insectlopedia, so I was happy to get my hands on his latest book, Poetrees. As you can guess from the great title, these poems are about trees.One thing I like about the book is that it opens sideways, so the spreads extend vertically to accommodate the height of the trees in the art. This author-illustrator's artwork is again weirdly cool, produced using mixed media on brown paper bags which remind us, not only of the look and texture of bark, but that paper is generally derived from trees. I especially liked the giant sequoia, in part because of the hands he put in the trunk and in part because my family used to go to Sequoia National Park every summer, where we regularly yelled and ran with a certain amount of delight when the bears came up on our cabin porch to eat our supper.Some of the poems are more striking than others, but they combine to give the reader a woodsy feel--you can practically smell the leaf mold and pine needles. For example, a poem titled "Seed" wraps in a figure eight, reading, "Inside this seed you'll find a stem and leaf that grow with rain into a trunk and branch and leaf and seed that starts again." My favorite is probably the dragon tree, which longs to fly like its dragon cousins. There's even a spooky poem about a yew growing near a grave. A "Glossatree" at the back adds further facts about each tree or topic from the poems.Poetrees is another nice offering from Douglas Florian, whose clean language and gentle puns capture tree thoughts on pages like so many fallen leaves. While this isn't my favorite of his collections, if you're a Florian fan you'll want to take a look.

Douglas Florian is at it again with another kooky collection of creative compositions about the natural world. As this volume reveals, he's just as at ease with trees as he is with lizards, aardvarks and bees. Florian's work has natural kid-appeal because of its boundless curiosity and unconventiality.The mixed-media on paper-bag-canvas artwork is wild and primitive. The poems are full of fun and pun, driving rhythm and clever rhyme.The subject matter--trees and their parts--is fastinating. Several of the poems are about amazingly exotic trees which sent me Googling--images of African Dragon trees, Banyans and hollow Yew trees, for instance are a must-see for expansion companion to this volume. I also like the ones closer to home--like "Bark". Scientific tidbits in these poems can lead to more learning.I love how Florian loves to play with the language--twisty rhymnes and word plays abound. But I wonder if some of these works might create confusion for the young child, who may not understand their figurative nature. "The Dragon Tree" is an example of this. For this reason, I think the book should stimulate discussion beyond what is on the page, as the reader grows to greater understanding. I think these "Poetree" poems should have a broad appeal from the very young child who can enjoy the strong rhytmn and the silliness, to the older reader who can think about them and learn more. Good for read-aloud and for creative thinking.