Bookie Woogie: Stan Fellows

Monday, January 11, 2010

Review #56: The Cuckoo's Haiku

Dad: "The Cuckoo's Haiku..." That's hard to say out loud, isn't it?
Lily (age 6): It's a tongue twister!
Dad: This is "The Cuckoo's Haiku" by Michael J. Rosen, illustrated by Stan Fellows.
Gracie (age 9): This book is all haikus.
Dad: Who can tell me what a haiku is.
Gracie: It's a poem where you have to have 5 syllables, then 7 syllables, then 5 syllables.
Dad: Does it have to rhyme?
Gracie: No.
Dad: "Poem" doesn't always mean "lines that end the same." Poems are just when you write with rules in mind... when you fit words into a pattern. Maybe the pattern is made of the last words in the lines rhyming. But that's not the only kind of pattern.
Lily: Five, seven, five.
Dad: Can you describe this book? We don't really have a plot to explain.
Isaac (age 11): Haikus about birds.
Dad: Well, that about sums it up...
Isaac: Yup!
Gracie: They are fun haikus.
Isaac: They are cool. They are very descriptive.
Gracie: It doesn't just say "This is a gray bird / It can fly very high up / This is the end now."
Dad: Ha ha - yes, that would have been a haiku...
Gracie: But it would be boring. The ones in this book are not boring. Like the bluebird one goes: "on a staff of wires / blue notes inked from April skies / truly, spring's first song." He made the poem awesome.
Isaac: It's a very descriptive way of explaining birds.
Dad: What do you like better, the paintings or the poems?
Gracie: They are equally matched. They are both stinking awesome!
Lily: Awesomely stinking awesome!
Dad: We talked about Michael J. Rosen's poems a bit already. Tell me about Stan Fellow's illustrations.
Gracie: He paints cool. Isaac can paint birds that way!
Lily: And when the artist drew something and changed his mind, he didn't even erase it.
Gracie: But that makes it cool!
Lily: He wanted to draw a grasshopper, and then he was like, "Nah, I don't want to do it anymore."
Dad: So he left that part of the painting unfinished, huh.
Lily: He didn't even finish drawing this bird. He was like, "I want to color this bird in... naw... I don't want to color it anymore."
Gracie: And he didn't even erase that unfinished part. He doesn't care. Whatever parts he wants to draw, he just draws.
Dad: And he uses watercolors. You guys like using watercolors don 't you?
Lily: Yeah! And sometimes he goes "splat-ly." Sometimes it looks like he just whacks with the paintbrush so the paints go all over the paper.
Isaac: He also puts all kinds of little pictures around randomly.
Gracie: And he puts them in panels, panels, panels.
Lily: This picture is on the same page as this picture, but he just put a square around it.
Gracie: That's called a panel.
Dad: Did you have a favorite page in this book?
Gracie: Yes. I'll find it. I like this one.
Dad: The Cedar Waxwing...
Gracie: Yeah. I like this part right here. The part in the panel with the berry in his mouth. I want to hang this up. If we ever get 100 copies of this book, can I have one and cut this part out? It's so pretty.
Isaac: I like the turkey one. It's just cool.
Dad: That's my favorite too.
Gracie: It would be better if the bird was the prettiest bird in the whole world instead of just a turkey.
Dad: Turkeys might be goofy looking, but sometimes the goofy animals are more fun to look at than the pretty ones.
Lily: I learned that turkeys' footprints look like arrows -- but the turkeys move the opposite way of the arrows. So you can tell where a turkey is when it runs away.
Dad: You just follow the arrows backward.
Lily: Yep.
Dad: We really liked the apple tree poem too...
Gracie: Oh yeah, that was funny.
Dad: To what did they compare the apple tree?
Gracie: An actual apple.
Lily: With "apple seed" birds.
Gracie: If you flip the book upside down on the page with the white tree and the crows, the tree looks like an apple.
Lily: A sliced open apple.
Gracie: The black crows look like the seeds in the middle.
Dad: So did this book inspire you? Are you all creative and poetic now? Do you have ideas flowing out of your brains like melted butter running down toast?
Gracie: Dad, that was awesome!
Isaac: No. It's more like bricks stuck in my head that won't come out.
Dad: There you go! That sounds poetic too! Just throw it into a haiku... 5, 7, 5. "Bricks stuck in my head / Those darn thoughts will not come out / My poem is stuck."
Isaac: You're good at haikus. See, I could never do it that fast.
Dad: Does anyone have a descriptive way to summarize the book?
Isaac: Like, make up a haiku about the book?
Dad: Yeah. That's what Michael J. Rosen does. He doesn't just say, "This is how it is." He paints with words. He makes a painting in our imagination, and his words are the brush.
Isaac: How do you do that? You are good at this stuff!
Dad: How would you describe this book poetically?
Lily: This book is like a bird. Because they are both beautiful.
Gracie: This book reminds me of music. It's really pretty. It's really graceful, and it's got its own rhythm.
Dad: Good job. Very poetic of you.