Everything Glistens and Everything Sings: New and Selected Poems

This collection of poems, arranged under eight subject categories, successfully pairs two distinguished children's book creators. Like Japanese haiku, Zolotow's poems offer images rather than developed ideas, and they focus on the senseson feeling, seeing and touching. The language is simple and direct; the similes are easily accessible to children. The wings of a beetle, for example, ""glisten/ like a small rainbow,'' and the snow sparkles ``like crystals of sugar.'' The pond in the morning ``is green/ with water lilies/ like little moons/ floating,'' and at night ``is dark and mysterious/ like a bowl/ of black ink.'' Tomes's distinctive black-and-white drawings perceptively interpret these delicate poems where ``everything glistens and everything sings/ in the spring wind/ after the rain.'' Ages 6-9. (December)