for reading aloud. For this volume, which has the same large-size, heavily illustrated format as the popular Beauty of the Beast: Poems from the Animal Kingdom (1997), Prelutsky has selected more 200 poems for children by 137 poets spanning the twentieth century. Although a few of the poets are English, almost all are contemporary and American, and almost all of the poems were originally published for children. On each double-page spread there are four to six poems on a theme--food, school, reading, pets, sibling rivalry, the seasons, nonsense, etc.--lavishly illustrated with Meilo So's energetic watercolors. The pictures are gorgeous, but as in Beauty of the Beast the crowded pages sometimes barely leave room for the words, or for imagining what the words suggest. Still, the gift-book design does encourage browsing. Teachers and librarians will want to use this millennial volume with Prelutsky's Random House Book of Poetry for Children (1983) to introduce our best children's poets and encourage children to write about their immediate experience. (Reviewed December 15, 1999)

While less comprehensive than the title suggests, the volume does contain more than 200 poems by 137 mostly contemporary, and mostly American, poets. Each double-page spread bursts with poems focused loosely on a theme--seasons, animals, school, and food among them--as well as lively watercolors delineated with brief, calligraphic brush strokes. Busy but beautiful, this collection is an enticing one.

For this companion to The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury, Prelutsky combed more than 4000 poetry volumes to select 211 poems by 137 poets. His sampling includes established poets like Langston Hughes, Shel Silverstein and e.e. cummings, but, to Prelutsky's credit, not necessarily their best-known works. The overriding mood is rollickingly upbeat, uncharacteristic for a form renowned for its adeptness at expressing moments of grief or loneliness. Hats off to So (The Beauty of the Beast, with Prelutsky), who visually holds the anthology together. Her people are engagingly limber, her animals unmatched: for instance, she evokes the fitful movements of a squirrel with a few calligraphic strokes, and her wet-on-wet technique suggests the fluffy texture of a kitten's fur or the speed of leaping salmon. In one spread, she ingeniously accommodates eight bug poems--from poets as diverse as Ogden Nash and Valerie Worth; the poems themselves appear to flit about a central image of two children nearly hidden in a field of wildflowers. She connects four stand-alone poems in another spread (""""A Hippopotamusn't"""" by J. Patrick Lewis and """"The Click Clacker Machine"""" by Donna Lugg Pape are two of them) with a unified palette of pinks and lavenders. Its unvarying tone notwithstanding, this eye-catching collection is likely to lure both future fans of verse and poetry devotees. All ages. (Sept.)