If This Bird Had Pockets: A Poem in Your Pocket Day Celebration

VanDerwater’s playful collection opens with a light-brown-skinned child gazing out a window, prepared for Poem in Your Pocket Day and wondering about “creatures everywhere/ Which poems would they carry?” In the following pages, animals, birds, and insects satisfy the question with child-friendly verses in simple rhythms and varying rhyme schemes. A red fox lyrically proclaims: “In forest/ ever brown and green/ I am a splendid spark.// My poem is/ my fiery tail/ flashing in the dark.” Elsewhere, an Atlantic horseshoe crab explains: “Our ancestors/ are ocean history./ We are part understood./ Part mystery.” Virján’s flat art style presents a variety of species, settings, and color palettes. Not only fun to contemplate, each poem also imparts a information about its speaker, making for a group of brief lessons as pleasing as they are accessible about “life in the/ wondrous wild.” Ages 4–8. (Mar.)