(4) K-3 Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. "The thing is, / the thing is green. / And the green is, / the green is green." So begins this occasionally haltingly written book-length riddle, which will reward persistence. Texturally sumptuous mixed-media-collage illustrations usher readers through a luscious exploration of things green ("Think rolling-waves-of-grain green / thick green vines / climbing high") until they reach Big Green itself (the earth).

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. This picture book biography celebrates Betty Mae Jumper, in 1967 the first woman to be elected a Seminole tribal leader. Annino's information about Jumper's early years is sketchy, but facts about her later life, education, and service as a nurse, interpreter, and spokesperson flesh-out the portrait. Desimini's naive-style paintings highlight the traditional Seminole way of life and clothing.

Reviewer: Miriam Lang Budin

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. When Iris's illness threatens to keep the family from Grandpa's party, her twin brother gives her a hard time. Kids will identify with both sibs, but the text's intermittent rhymes ("Her head was hot. / She threw up in a pot") are more disruptive than engaging. The appealing cut-paper and digital art makes playful use of perspective.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Lisa Desimini & Lisa Desimini. Inviting cut-paper illustrations depict the winter holiday adventures of twin snowflake sisters, Crystal and Ivory, who, among other things, hitch a ride on Santa's sleigh and watch the ball drop in Times Square on New Year's Eve. The breathless rhyming text is lively and unpredictable but forced in spots (e.g., "What is that tin bell I hear / Jingling...like a chandelier?").

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. This picture book features Kokopelli, a folkloric character known to the Hopi, Zuni, and Pueblo peoples of the Southwest. Playing his flute, Kokopelli entices first the desert animals and then the children to dance behind him through the dark night. The fluid text and deep purple paintings will pull readers into a magical mood. An appended note provides information on the origins of the Kokopelli legends.

Reviewer: Melinda Greenblatt

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. This collection imagines different animals' dream houses: "A turtle likes a humble home / To match his geodesic dome"; a flamingo lives in a "...Flamingolow, / A flaming hot pink bungalow." Readers will be drawn to the wordplay and tongue-in-cheek humor, but some vocabulary may be a bit sophisticated for the intended age group. Desimini's mixed-media illustrations cleverly interpret and extend the poems.

Reviewer: Aishah Abdul-Musawwir

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. This lively, colorful book of poems about itches, walks in the mud, the fuzz on a peach, the drip of an ice cream cone, sitting in a bathtub, and playing in the snow are complemented and extended by mixed-media collages. Adoff's solid imagery and unique punctuation and spacing add to the enjoyment of this book as poetry and art. This is a good choice for reading aloud and for inspiring students to write their own poems.

Reviewer:

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Lisa Desimini. 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 . . . .

Reviewer: Lauren Adams | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 1998

(4) K-3 Having driven from Ohio to Oregon, a young man waxes poetic about the Nebraska skies, the Colorado mountains, and the other natural wonders he and his dog saw in various states along the way. The images are evocative and succinct yet rather random; perhaps a route map should have accompanied the richly colored stylized paintings to help readers get their bearings.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc.