Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

This collection of nineteen poems focuses mostly on the experience of being small in a world of grownups and taller kids. Some poems talk about adaptations (in “Movie,” “Dad brings encyclopedia/ A through C, props me up so I can see”), some about advantages (“My four foot frame/ built just for this game,” says the narrator of “Air Shortness” about dodgeball), and some just about general experiences of childhood (“Parent-Teacher Conference,” “Sleep Over”). The free-verse poems are uneven and a little prosy, with some of them rather generic; standout entries are those such as “Movie” and “Small Soldier,” which possess a compact theme-relevant story. Opaque paints textured with mottled strokes give the figures sturdy dimensionality; the faces of the multicultural cast are blandly similar, but the kids are situated in lively child-friendly landscapes suitable for reflection on their status and stature. This isn’t going to dethrone the likes of Florian or Prelutsky, but it’ll offer some humorous sympathy to young audiences, who are keenly aware of the disadvantages of being smaller.