I Can Draw a Weeposaur and Other Dinosaurs: Poems

Eloise Greenfield is a celebrated poet and the author of more than forty books for children, including the Coretta Scott King Award winner Africa Dream; the Coretta Scott King Honor books Mary Mcleod Bethune and Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir, co-written with Lessie Jones Little; and the Parents' Choice Silver Honor Award Book I Can Draw a Weeposaur and Other Dinosaurs. Ms. Greenfield is the recipient of the Hope S. Dean Award from the Foundation for Children's Literature and the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children for the body of her work, and she has been inducted into the National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. "Honey, I Love," the title poem of one of her most wellknown poetry collections, will be illustrated as a picture book in honor of the collection's twenty-fifth anniversary of publication.

A menagerie of fanciful beasts springs from the imagination of the young artist who narrates this slim collection of verses: "My dinosaurs/ walk from my brush/ and live,/ they do what my/ moving hand/ tells them to do,/ they are paint/ on paper./ I love them." The premise is promising and the lineup engaging, with such creatures as the Smellasaurus, Messysaurus and Shoppersaurus ("The dinosaur mall/ Is his main habitat") lurking on the pages. But both Greenfield and Gilchrist (previously paired for Night on Neighborhood Street) turn in uneven performances. A number of Greenfield's verses display a nimble, Prelutsky-like wit--the jaunty Babysaurus, for instance, is "his mama's little baby,/ Smiling sweet in Tennessee,/ But his middle's in Montana,/ And his tail's in Waikiki")--while other entries are awkward ("He fell when he tried to do a handstand,/ He fell when he walked a beam,/ But he was the greatest at landing on top/ Of his gymnastics team"). Gilchrist's fans will find only a few of her usual warm, realistic watercolor portraits (namely, of the child speaker); most of the illustrations are rendered in colored markers, in a flat, cartoonlike style, as if drawn by the narrator himself. Unfortunately, the result is not so much childlike as contrived--the compositions lack spontaneity. Ultimately, this is neither the author's nor the artist's best effort. Ages 4-up.

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