Beastly Verse by JooHee Yoon

Beastly Verse by JooHee Yoon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hardcover, 48 pages
Published April 7th 2015 by Enchanted Lion Books

An illustrated picture book of famous poetry about animals from the quaint to the silly to the serious. There are free verse, rhyming stanzas and even one limerick. Poets include those hailed for children such as Christina Rossetti, those famed for the humorous such as Ogden Nash and the masters such as Blake. I always say I'm not a poetry person, and I'm not really. But! This is the way I like my poetry: presented in an illustrated children's collection. Several of these have prominent places on my shelves and this one is worthy of buying also. I read an egalley provided by the publisher so did not get the full experience of this but some of the pages are even magnificent fold-outs. The illustration is gorgeous! It reminds me of a childhood book of poems I have by Polish illustrator Krystyna Stasiak. JooHee Yoon's artwork is very reminiscent of the 70s: wild colour combinations such as orange/yellow, green/yellow and vibrant green/blue, pattern mixing such as polka dots/bricks, diamonds/gingham and tiger print/leaves. His work is obviously highly printmaking-based but I'd guess he adds sketching/drawing as well. The only complaint I have is that on a couple of occasions the colour of the text vs background was a poor choice making a few poems difficult to read such as yellow text on a patterned blue/green background and light blue text on a yellow background but most of the time the contrast works well. A wonderful collection and variety of poems that children will enjoy and marvellous, bold, bright illustration to make it simply fun to read.