Guess what! Stitching for Literacy has two children’s book professionals guest-blogging during the 2010 Bookmark Challenge. They’ve chosen some of their favorite books to share with us.

Written by Jack Prelutsky
Illustrated by Peter Sis

As well as flowers enticing showers, April brings poetry. During National Poetry Month I have enjoyed a torrent of wonderful words, which included revisiting some of my favorite children’s poetry collections. At the top of that list would be Jack Prelutsky’s, “Scranimals”. Peter Sis crafts the extraordinary illustrations.

The action takes place on mythical Scranimal Island, where the book’s intrepid travelers discover inhabitants are a hodgepodge of mammal, vegetable, reptile, bird and flower. The Rhinocerose. The Potatoad. The Mangorilla. The Pandaffodil. And my favorite: the Radishark, described by Mr. Prelutsky in the following manner:

“In the middle of the ocean,
In the deep deep dark,
Dwells a monstrous apparition,
The detested RADISHARK.
It’s an underwater nightmare
That you hope you never meet,
For it eats what it wants,
And it always wants to eat.

Its appalling, bulbous body
Is astonishingly red,
And its fangs are sharp and gleaming
In its huge and horrid head,
And the only thought it harbors
In its small but frightful mind,
Is to catch you and to bite you
On your belly and behind. …”

The poems inspire imagination. Reader’s will be transported to a magical land and quickly be adding their own fanciful combo-creatures. Mr. Prelutsky’s hilarious (genius silliness) rhyme interspersed with exotic words (that sound wonderful when read aloud, i.e. bulbous) will generate tons of laughter. And what brilliant illustrations! Mr. Sis’s highly detailed, delicate illustrations closely resemble scientific journal drawings, which perfectly enhances the exploration spirit of the project.

A voyage to Scranimal Island will be a journey that adventurers and language lovers of all ages will enjoy.

Suzy Wilson has been a Bookseller and Children’s Book Buyer for a decade plus a few bonus years. She is a constant reader, resulting in numerous tripping-over-curb injuries.