Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 03/01/2022 The latest offering from the grizzled wizard of wordplay presents 20 creatures, from llamas, who “llove to graze on grass” and have a llot of mass, to giraffes that “eat the leaves / of tallest trees / most all giraffe-ternoon.” In verses running from just a couplet to a dozen or so lines each, Florian intersperses snippets of natural history with imaginative flights of fancy, putting centipedes and millipedes on bicycles to admire how fast they “centi-pedal,” or setting an unhappy circus elephant to dreams of flying in “ele-fantasies.” The poems are paired with likewise freewheeling portraits that treat viewers to sights ranging from a naked mole rat trying on a pair of shorts to a hammerhead shark pounding nails into a board, all rendered in scribbly preschooler style (though he does stay inside the lines, barely) with crayons or pastels on paper bags. It's beastly fun, as usual, whether read silently or bellowed aloud. - Copyright 2022 Booklist.