Horn Book (Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2014)

Short singsongy verses about Pacific Northwest animals are paired with dramatic illustrations that, while evocatively depicting each animal in its habitat, are often rough or murky. Many rhymes don't scan effectively, and the presentation would benefit from more information about its subjects. A well-intentioned but slight ode to the region's sonorous wildlife.

Kirkus Reviews

A wolf's howl. A loon's haunting cry. What do they communicate? Seeing a title like Why Do I Sing? Animal Songs of the Pacific Northwest, readers might expect to discover the possible meanings of various animal sounds. Instead, the author dreamily imagines. A cricket's song, she posits, "is of summer and warmth everywhere." Each of the 14 Northwest creatures' vocalizations is described in a four-line stanza, including--oddly--the ever-silent starfish: "As the STARFISH are washed by the tide's ebb and flow, / They just might be singing a song we can't know. / We don't see or hear the world the same way / As so many living things near us each day." The poetry is often stumblingly cumbersome, as in the marmot stanza: "In wintertime MARMOTS sleep in dens under rock piles, / By summer, high peaks sound with their whistles, heard for miles." In a cozy denouement, humans sing around a campfire, "for joy." Gabriel's handsome, atmospheric watercolor paintings on textured paper capture scenic panoramas or zoom in to render animals larger than life, from honeybee to meadowlark. While this is a lovely visual tribute to Pacific Northwest animals, the stilted verse makes it a disappointing follow-up to the team's award-winning Where Do I Sleep? A Pacific Northwest Lullaby (2008). (Picture book/poetry. 2-7)

School Library Journal (Sun Dec 01 00:00:00 CST 2013)

PreS-Gr 1 Singing is a fanciful concept when applied to some of the 14 animals of air, water, field, and forest introduced in this poetic compendium. Though they're depicted realistically in their natural settings, descriptions of their behavior range from realistic to suggestive or imaginative. "Why do I sing in a big twilight chorus/That fills up the wetlands and pastures and forests?/A sure sign of spring and romance in the bogs,/The riotous ribbits of Pacific Tree Frogs." Highlighting the meadowlark, the spotted owl, the red-winged blackbird, and the tundra swan, the quatrains set on double-page landscapes also touch on fin whales, Arctic wolves, honeybees, and conclude with children by an evening campsite. The loon sings "in a wild, eerie cry," and the Roosevelt bull elk has "a strange, wild call" that "rises high and bugles a challenge far and wide." The western rattlesnakes make little noise"Seldom using their rattles, they would rather just lie still." Some animals, such as the starfish, might be singing "a song we can't know." The rhyme scheme moves along nicely in terms sometimes more meaningful to adult readers than to youngsters, but the lovely scenes and animal portraits will be much enjoyed by those young children who like to talk their way through picture books. Gabriel's luscious pastel work on heavily textured paper will surely invite touching and some lingering viewing. Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston