Footprints on the Roof: Poems About the Earth

She treads gently over "mazy metropolises" of rabbits and worms. She chooses the ooze of mud. She contemplates "dormant dragons," natural disasters, and tadpoles born in the "sudden pools" of desert rain. Poet Marilyn Singer all but sings to the earth in this tribute to the wet, dry, hot, cold, messy natural places of the planet. Her free verse surprises the reader with its unexpected perspectives, and yet the images have a rightness to them that settles quietly in the heart. In "Back to Nature," Singer talks about how people want to be far away from humus moss and leaf mold, "from things soft and unpredictable / that slide beneath our feet," and yet even among our lampposts and sewers, nature returns, dropping mulberries "fat and purple" on the sidewalk, "turning the pavement soft and unpredictable / making it slide beneath our feet." Illustrator Meilo So's (The 20th-Century Children's Poetry Treasury) black-and-white India ink drawings on rice paper are breathtaking, as simple and complex as the poems themselves. Both Singer and So inspire the imagination with this lovely collection. (Ages 8 and older) --Emilie Coulter