I am happy to announce that Linda at Teacherdance is
the winner of Spot the Plot: A Riddle Book of Book Riddles. Congratulations,
Linda! Email me your address and I’ll send the book off to you.
My book giveaway for the third week of National Poetry
Month will be COWBOYS—with poems by David L. Harrison and illustrations by Dan Burr.
Click here to look inside the book.
Book Review of COWBOYS from Kirkus:
Free-verse cowpoke ruminations on the trail to Abilene, with
paintings of long-horned dogies and grizzled riders beneath big skies.
Saddle up, pardner, leave the bunkhouse (where “[b]ugs gnaw
plugs right outta your hide”) behind and look fer dusty days, freezing nights,
rattlers, storms and meal after meal of beef and beans from Cookie. Harking
back to cattle drives of yesteryear, Burr portrays leather-skinned figures with
near-photographic realism. “You need sand in your gizzard / to wrangle wild
cows, / chaps for fendin’ off thorns / or horses with a taste / for cowpoke
leg.” They pose in full regalia, branding a calf, mending barbed wire, gazing
up at the stars, trying desperately to stay on horseback amid a stampede,
lazing around the chuck wagon, riding at last into town and ruefully bidding
hard-earned wages goodbye at a poker table. Two saloon floozies at the end, a
dark-skinned trailhand (“I’m on a journey of my own / figuring how it feels /
to be free”) and a spirited filly in blue jeans left back at the ranch to
fulminate are the only ones here who aren’t typecast Marlboro Men.
So git along, there, anyone with a mind to share cowboy
dreams in romanticized, Old West style. (afterword) (Poetry. 10-12)
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