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PICTURE BOOKS
Morstad , Julie

A Face Is a Poem

48 pp. | Tundra | September, 2024 | Trade ISBN 9780735267565 $18.99 | Ebook ISBN 9780735267572 $10.99
(2) K-3 "A face is a poem / with all the parts put together, / adding up to someone / you love." An observant, imaginative speaker offers musings about faces, from the concrete ("the delicate / scratchy hairs") to the hypothetical ("What if you could change faces every morning, / just to see through someone else's eyes?") to the silly ("Even a potato / has eyes!"). The whimsical text is elevated by its thoughtful placement on the page amid the varied, soft-hued mixed-media illustrations. Rows of human and animal eyes punctuate a list of real and imagined potential eye colors. Luminous eyes, and a nose and mouth made of stars take up a full spread, giving way to faces arranged in an inclusive patchwork and then to one bordered by Picasso-esque "rearranged" visages. In a few illustrations, lines of dialogue emanate from small faces or figures, but the emphasis is always on what's being observed about faces. Fans of Julie Fogliano (recently All the Beating Hearts, rev. 1/23) might especially enjoy this meditation on noticing what's in front of -- and, in this case, part of -- our faces.
Reviewer: Shoshana Flax | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2024

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