Land Sea & Sky: Poems to Celebrate the Earth

Framed between Aileen Fisher's ``Looking Around'' (``Bees/own the clover,/birds/own the sky...'') and Felice Holman's ``Who Am I?'' (``The trees ask me,/And the sky...''), 17 more poems, grouped as the title suggests and all of good quality (though Dickinson's ``I'll tell you how the sun rose'' easily outshines the rest). Only Durston's anthropomorphic ``The Wolf'' strikes a false note, and even that--like the others--is a perfect match for the insightful and beautifully composed color photo it accompanies. The photos are splendid--from the Sierra Club calendar-quality ``For Purple Mountains' Majesty,'' with a dramatic streak of golden aspens in the middle distance, to a city child with joyful face upturned for Langston Hughes's ``April Rain Song''; from a New England pasture to the tail of a diving whale. A celebration indeed. (Poetry/Picture book. 5-10) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.