Please Bury Me in the Library

Filled with lots of fun and silly poems that children and educators would enjoy. The book also features beautiful illustrations for each poem. A must have for any school library or elementary school classroom.

I love books, and I also work in a library, so I really had no choice but to see what this book was about when I came across its intriguing title. There is no murder or mayhem in these pages, of course, because Please Bury Me in the Library is very much a children's book - one aimed mostly at fairly young children. This is the kind of a book a parent would read to a young child as the future reader delights in the excellent artwork. Each picture accompanies a poem by J. Patrick Lewis, who throws in an interesting mix of poetic styles: haiku, free verse, rhyming verse, even an acrostic salute to libraries. I wasn't all that impressed by some of the poems, but this is largely due to the fact that they are aimed primarily at fairly young children (and I haven't been fairly young in a good many years now) - these are simple little verses that come across much better when read aloud. I'm sure many children would really enjoy them. It's really the artwork that makes this book special, though. Kyle M. Stone's artwork is both whimsical and a little dark - not scary, of course, but dark in a "Tim Burton was here" sort of way. As an adult, I feel sure that looking at these illustrations is about as close as I can ever come to once again seeing the world through a child's eyes - and that, in my opinion, makes this book a visual treat for young and old alike.

This review first appeared in the "Ephrata (PA) Review": This ode to books and reading consists of 16 witty word-plays and short poems. It's easy to see why Lewis names Edward Lear as an influence on his work, evident in "Great, Good, Bad": A great book is a homing device For navigating paradise. A good book somehow makes you care About the comfort of a chair. A bad book owes to many trees A forest of apologies. The illustrator appears to owe a debt to John Tenniel, creator of the nonsensical creatures that inhabit the pages of "Alice in Wonderland." While Tenniel's illustrations are pencil sketches, Stone's--in this his debut picture book--are richly colored paintings. The picture accompanying "Great, Good, Bad" depicts an odd little boy standing on a tree stump, the remains of a misty woodlands behind him. All in all, a great book on books!

There is something in Kyle Stone's style that takes one aback at first. It is like looking at a picture you might've drawn once, when you were a child, or dreamed about drawing anyway, before you put your crayon to the paper and finished yet another square house with smoke coming from the chimney. Stone's illustrations are like that; they come directly, seemingly unvarnished, from the mind of a child, and like the best of childhood they are wild and not altogether safe and just a little bit magical. The fact that Stone could find that place within himself and recover these images is a worthy feat. That he could then execute on these images with such perfect technique is remarkable. There is mastery here; not perhaps fully realized, but certainly in development. J. Patrick Lewis must be delighted. With Stone's illustrations his words take on a depth and resonance he could hardly have imagined possible. But in the end it comes down to the children, and after all a child will know instantly if you've got it right. If the children of my acquaintance are any indication, this is a special book. My highest recommendation.

With regard to Please Bury Me in the Library, the consensus among the teachers here at the Oasis is: This is one of our top ten all-time-favorite books. After reading it, each of us immediately went to the bookstore to buy a copy for her or his classroom. What is so wonderful, you ask? Everything! The poems are gems, full of witty word-play and humor and an occasional serious moment. As you might imagine from the title, the poems are about books and reading and words. In "The Big-Word Girl" we meet Elaine who "could not unglue her eyes/ From Webster's Dictionary" (even though she is sits at a horror show-Godzilla Meets Tooth Fairy-with a green monster at her side). In "Flea-ting Fame" we meet Otto the flea, a "fly-by-night," who is writing by firefly light his "Ottobiography." Although this is a picture book, it offers something for word lovers of all ages. In "Three Haiku," for example, we read: Epitaph for a Devoted Lifelong Reader- Thank you for the plot and Late at night, reading Frankenstein . . . and suddenly a pain in the neck. Kyle M. Stone was the perfect choice as illustrator. The acrylic paintings and mixed media illustrations are as clever and beguiling as the poems they accompany. "What if Books Had Different Names," for example, sits next to a painting of an endearing thin bodied, lobster-bibbed lamb waiting to tuck into a plate of green eggs and spam. Classroom Uses: Suitable for read-alouds, independent reading, and even middle school classrooms. You may access a teacher's guide from the publisher here. We took the book into an eighth-grade language arts classroom where it was extremely popular. The students were especially enamored with the illustrations. After reading the poem "Necessary Gardens" (an acrostic spelling out the word "Language'), we had the students write an acrostic about their favorite person, place, or thing and then illustrate their poem. Highly recommended. Suitable for district-wide purchase.