Slickety Quick: Poems About Sharks

Brown (Caminar) presents 14 types of sharks—wobbegongs, makos, and hammerheads, among them—in a series of well-crafted poems that range from playful to ominous. Several concrete poems are in the mix: a line describing the “two long whiskers—like a frown” of a nurse shark stretches across the fish’s face like a mustache, while a spiral-shaped poem evokes the circular bites the cookie-cutter shark takes out of its victims, leaving a “cookie-shaped hole” when it twists away. Working in a mostly muted palette of greens, grays, and blues, Kolar (The Boy & the Book) contributes flattened, posterlike images of the sharks, often dramatically lit from above by angular shafts of light. All in all, it’s a book that ought to leave many readers fascinated—and perhaps a little unsettled—by the diversity of sharks that exist beneath the waves. Ages 6–9. Author’s agent: Tina Wexler, ICM. (Mar.)