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CM . . .
. Volume XVI Number 35. . . .May 14, 2010
excerpt:
Ships, the sea and sailing are celebrated in this collection of 24 poems. The first half of the book includes traditional favourites such as "Wynken, Blynken and Nod," "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean" and "The Owl and the Pussycat." The following 13 entries are original poems written by Jane Collins-Philippe. "The Good Ship Royal" is a rollicking yarn about a motley crew of animals: "The shiphands are weasels/And penguins and sheep,/Who all end up tangled/ In everyone's feet?. In "Sea Shell," children find a "flute/That helps the sea sing." Rounding out the collection are silly poems such as "Something Fishy" about a fish who swims upside down and gets seasick.
Recommended. Linda Ludke is a librarian in London, ON.
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Eugene Field and Edward Lear are hard poetic acts to follow. Collins-Philippe's strongest entries are the lyrical and reflective ones, such as "Sailing" ("The sun will rise from where we came,/ And quietly paint the sea with flame./ Then on we will go like a shimmering pearl/And sail our boat to the end of the world?). In her biography, it is noted that she spends half her time on a sailboat on the Mediterranean Ocean and her love of the sea is apparent. Some of the weaker poems include rhyming couplets that seem a bit forced: "The captain was flattened - /A right chocolate-chip cookie -/ But Mary just laughed/ And said, 'Well, lookie, lookie!'"