Our Village Poems

Yeoman and Blake create an entire village, from the maps on the endpapers to the the poems within the pages, which introduce both people and places: a washer woman `` pegs the washing up to dry, / like brightly colored kites, '' and `` Headache, nosebleed, / Cough or fluDr. Potts / Knows what to do.'' A gardener grows oversized plants, but he is the smallest man in town; a tailor is too busy to notice how much his own clothing needs to be replaced or patched. And a pond in winter has ``a coating of ice like a great windowpane.'' The characters frolic on the pages, in Blake's loose-lined, flowing art. And the result of both poems and pictures is a strong sense of place, where readers will meet town eccentrics and ordinary folk, tumbling through the book, busy with their lives. Ages 6-8. (September)