Starred Review for Publishers Weekly (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

From endpaper to doodled endpaper, this mix of clever language and visual delights makes a dandy treat for all ages. Desimini's (Love Letters) mixed-media illustrations and Lewis's (A Hippopotamusn't) inventive poems converge in a single work stronger than either would be independent of the other. The interplay between words and pictures effectively conjures images from seasons to sports to the jungle. In """"Lashondra Scores!"""" each line of the poem includes a word with the letter """"O,"""" which Desimini transforms into a basketball, creating an arc of text that follows the ball from Lashondra's hand to its eventual swish through the hoop. In another, the trunk of a weeping willow tree tells of a widow weeping, while its branches trail gracefully down, each containing the refrain, """"Her wind-woven hair softly sweeping."""" The shape of a yellow-brown giraffe takes form against a background of forest green leaves in a concrete poem, """"Giraffe"""": the words tail and stilts literally form the animal's corresponding anatomy as he """"turns tail and hobbles away on wooden stilts."""" This lively and outstanding collection, reflecting a wide emotional range, will intrigue young artists and wordsmiths with its surprising use of color and unexpected wordplay. Ages 3-8. (Sept.)

School Library Journal Starred Review

Gr 3-6--Lewis, who has long been a master of a variety of poetic forms, has created an inventive collection of concrete poems. In each selection, the essence of the subject is captured in the typeface used for the words, the shape in which the lines are arranged, and through Desimini's brilliant mixed-media collages. Lines about a skyscraper take the form of that structure ("I /am/ a/ nee/dle /of/steel/glass &/cement...") and are set against a background of a clouded sky, small silhouettes of pedestrians, and rows of taxis. In "Big Cat," the words "day delights/in jungle cries/night ignites/its tiger eyes" wrap around the eyes of a tiger that stare dramatically at readers from a double-page spread. Every page of this book is well designed, creating words and images that work together in harmony. From the lavender endpapers that feature a mix of childlike drawings and letters in different typefaces, and the magic-marker doodles surrounding the various shapes on the CIP page, to the final page, each spread is fresh and inviting. Doodle Dandies captures the joy that wordplay can bring. It deserves a place on every library shelf.--Kathleen Whalin, Greenwich Country Day School, CT

ALA Booklist (Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 CDT 1998)

for reading aloud. The history of poems shaped on the page goes back at least to the seventeenth-century poet George Herbert, and certainly Lewis Carroll used it well in Alice Desimini and Lewis take that tradition to rowdy new heights. A poem called Dachshund casts a dog-shaped shadow; a wee widow weeping finds the lines of the poem about her making the trunk and limbs of a weeping willow tree. The Skyscraper shape is elegant if obvious, and the poem called Winter creates a verse of white letters drifting and falling on dark sky as evocatively as any Japanese scroll on silk. Some of the poems involve turning the book about to read all the words; some, like the one about oyster families (a mother-of-pearl) or the one about baseball pitches (the fastball that you hope to poke / is smoke), are printed on the object of their attention. The very mixed media art is full of textures and dark, rich colors that repay close examination. A dandy way indeed to begin a journey to poetry. (Reviewed July 1998)

Horn Book (Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 1999)

Through fanciful design and illustration, these poems take both shape and flight as they soar through the imaginative landscape. Inventively rhymed, each of the small, witty poems is a concrete poem--designed to take the form of its subject. Desimini's mixed-media collage provides a wide variety of backdrops for the poems. A true collaboration of text and art presenting poems that are pictures that are poems . . . .