A Place to Start a Family: Poems About Creatures That Build Hardcover – Illustrated, January 16, 2018

It's almost Valentine's Day, so speaking of love, according to Pliny the Elder, "Home is where the heart is." Unless you're a black-tailed prairie dog, then it's underground. Or if you're a king cobra, it's in a pile of leaves. White storks find their hearts, uh, homes, on chimney tops. These animal homes and others can be found celebrated poetically in David L. Harrison's new poetry collection, A Place To Start A Family: Poems About Creatures Who Build, illustrated by Giles Laroche. The diversity of poems that fill the pages parallel the diversity of animals written about, poems that will begin a journey of wonder about other animals' homes and construction prowess. There are four sections—building underground, on land, in the water, and in the air and a bonus poem at the end. Why? Because it is so unique a "home builder" that it doesn't fit in the earlier sections! I recognized some of these animals, like the star-nosed mole that David describes in part: "I keep my babies/ safe and dry,/ but otherwise/ I don't deny--/I love it wet/and full of bugs, worms, beetles,/ grubs, and slugs." And I know of the yellow garden spiders whose baby spiderlings hatch "the size of dust/sail away on gentle gust/to decorate another yard." The incredible protection created by these creatures amazes with what appears to be instinct, that need to ensure the endurance of its species. David's poetic words uniquely respect each. That three-spined stickleback fish weaves its home underwater: "See the tunnel?/See the mound?/See I made it/nice and round?. . ."The best nest/that's ever been!/Please,/Ms. Stickleback, swim in." David's poems from "in the air" include the red ovenbird and questions. I imagine reading this poem aloud with the repeating verses becoming increasingly louder because of the awe in viewing the nest. Here are a couple of verses: "How do you know/to weave/like that? and Make it round/with twigs/like that?" I also imagine students reading and hearing this and understanding that they too might try a poem with questions. David and Giles Laroche collaborated and created an earlier book, Now You See Them, Now you Don't: Poems About Creatures That Hide. Giles again has used cut paper collages on what the book says is "a series of hand-painted papers." His art enhances the poems with depth and clarity, so much that I wanted to reach out and lift some off the page. There is added information at the back of the book for each animal plus "Learn More" sections, too. It's a terrific non-fiction poetry collection that will inspire everyone, children to adults, to discover more about these interesting creatures, and perhaps look for others to add to the collection David and Giles created.

Hurray, this book finally arrived today! (I ordered it months ago.) It definitely lives up to its promise. The artwork is intricate, fascinating, and gorgeous. The poetry is fresh, fun and informative. I bought this for my toddler grandson, and had to be very careful. He was so excited by it and wanted to ripe the pages! My 10-year-old grandson is quite the naturalist, and he loves the illustrations, the poems, and especially the Learn More! boxes which lead him to more information about the builders he is curious about. Altogether, a book that offers so much: a look into the hidden world of builders and tunnelers, beautiful explanations of how they feed and hunt, mate and build. The poems are alive with rhythmic fun. This is a must for the child's library!

This is a very well thought out poetry collection that deserves a spot in any classroom library. The poems have a very pleasing resolution that gently introduce a manageable fact about creatures that build. As a teacher, I can see this book sparking curiosity in young readers and the back matter adds to the overall presentation with its subcategories of underground, on land, in water and in air builders. I found the use of line placement and stanzas very complimentary to the excellent illustrations, that are beautiful but don’t compete with or overpower the well-crafted poems. Highly recommended.

I really enjoyed using this book to help me announce to my class that I had a baby on the way... we were able to connect it to our ongoing Poetry Unit and connect it to our animal research in science! The students love guessing the different animals and guessing why I picked the book! Poetry from David always makes learning and sharing more fun!

The poems are wonderful, of course. The illustrations are first-rate. The organization of builders underground, on land, in water, and in the air divides this book so kids can easily make the connection of where these creatures live. I learned a bit myself, since sun coral were added as "A Different Kind of Builder." The formation of coral reefs are hard to understand, but kids will get it after listening to or reading this fun book.

I wrote this review for the Seattle Book Review. There are many builders in the animal kingdom, builders who use sticks and grass and hair and mud and spit and other materials they can scrounge up or create to build nests, some of quite extraordinary design. And when people think of nests, they most often will think of birds, but the reality is many animals build nests and the variety is endless. People might not think of fish as nest-building creatures, but of the dozen animal builders listed, two are fish. The three-spined stickleback fish actually builds a tunnel nest from plant material and sand while the artistic white-spotted pufferfish spends days arranging sand and seashells into a design nest. Spiders, snakes, rodents, and more fill the pages in this lovely book.Poet and writer David L. Harrison has developed a charming collection of poems about a variety of creatures with a mixture of poetic forms. Excellent informational back-matter will keep youngsters learning. The cut-paper art Giles Laroche created to illustrate these poems are the perfect complement to Harrison’s writing. Youngsters will enjoy finding the fine details in the illustrations while being captured by the fresh rhythm and rhymes of the poems.