Bookspeak: Poems about Books (review)

Twenty book-themed poems cover various aspects of books, reading, and the literary experience. Most verses speak in the voice of the book itself (in "Lights Out at the Bookstore," books revel at a nocturnal party; in "Vacation Time!" a book celebrates being checked out from the library to travel with a reader) or one of its elements ("A Character Pleads for His Life" features a character desperate to be read); others address the process from outside ("This Is the Book" describes the writer-to-publisher-to-reader chain). The poetry is solid rather than sparkling, but there's an inviting mix of forms from free verse to acrostic to rhyming, and the verses are clever in their approach and concept; kids will giggle at the notion of a come-hither index or an argument between the book's beginning, middle, and end ("a poem for three voices," of course). Bisaillon's mixed-media art relies strongly on collage assembly, and while a few figures look younger than the text's level would call for, readers will be drawn by the inventiveness of the graphic style and the crisp yet fanciful mix of digitally drawn elements, effervescent pieces of pattern, and reproduced slices of book page (composing bits of human and animal more often than books themselves). The result is a cheerfully circus-y feel to the visuals that emphasizes the poetry's playful nature. There's definite readaloud and performance potential here, and it would also be effective to slip a relevant poem into a language arts unit.