cover image Give Me Wings

Give Me Wings

Selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, illus. by Ponder Goembel, Holiday House, $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8234-2023-0

In this series of poems about wings and flight, with offerings from Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, April Halprin Wayland, and others, readers can embark on a journey through the skies. The verses connect humans' fascination with flight with the power of dreams ("Out of the dust of dreams/ fairies weave their garments," writes Hughes), music (says Leslie Danford Perkins, "A hundred voices sing/ wings grow stronger"), and imagination. Paired with Goembel's depictions of often-winged children borne aloft, sometimes tentatively, sometimes with confidence and exuberance, the poems create a contemplative tribute to flight. Ages 4–8. (Aug.)