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Bookjoy, Wordjoy

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By Booklist

Two stellar vets come together to celebrate wordplay.  In her introduction, Mora writes about her love of poetry and “the fun of listening to words, combining words, and playing with words,” emphasizing that each person is unique, so their wordplay will be as well. This leads into a marvelous collection of poems that extol the fun, adventure, and emotion that come with using one's words. Some of the poems are personal, like “Our Cottage in the Woods,” where a girl offers remembrances to her mother about their special place, where they snuggle, listening to the wind. The inventive “Who’s Inside?” asks children to find the animal that may be lurking within them. There are also odes to libraries and books, and singing and dancing, with each poem using Spanish words understood in context. Colón, whose artwork, he rerendered in watercolors and colored pencils, always delves deep, brings a new level of excitement andexuberance to this. Children swing, sashay, and almost jump off the pages. His shapes and colors add tothe feel of movement and fun in the oversize pages. A joyous invitation to put pen (or paintbrush) to paper.