This delightful and lively book of poems for younger children is a pleasure to read aloud. Vancouver author, teacher, and Greek and Latin scholar Robert Heidbreder, who wrote the collections of poems Don’t Eat Spiders and Eenie Meenie Manitoba, obviously has a deep love of words and an astute sense of rhythm. And he knows little kids – his topics are mud and bicycling, pythons and playgrounds, giggling and tickling. Robert Heidbreder could very likely write a rhyme about absolutely anything. Each poem is energetic and appealing, and avoids the common pitfalls of being too long, too clippity-cloppity, or too cute:

“See saw teeter totter/ I’m the pot/ And you’re the potter…/ Run a race fast or slow/ I’m the stop/ You’re the go.” Great fun to read aloud as a group, these are verses that will be enjoyable the second time, the 12th, the 20th.

Toronto illustrator and graphic designer Karen Patkau, who did the artwork in Don’t Eat Spiders, uses a playful combination of paint and collage to create strong, bright pictures full of exuberant children, dogs and cats, sailboats, and playgrounds. Young children will be engrossed by the variety of textures; Python Play just won the Bronze Award for Creative Excellence in Dimensional Illustration by the New York Society of Illustrators.

Nursery school and kindergarten kids and first- and second-graders will like this book. So will their parents and teachers.