I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchanIge for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This is an adorable collection of poetry and rhymes for children written by many different authors and poets (with information about each one at the back of the book) and written from the view point of a child.

The poems and rhymes in this book consist of many different topics - nature, seasons, weather, life etc.

I enjoyed this book and would love to share it with my daughter as she gets older.

Super disappointed by this small book of poems. It was not easy to read and not the themes were all over the place. Small criticism but the illustrations on the pages were very distracting as well. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Nimbus Publishing for the ARC. I am voluntarily reviewing this book. This is a collection of poetry. I am going to be honest and say I picked this for the cover, I didn't even read the blurb!! My bad but the cover is gorgeous. I am not even sure how the title correlates with the poems. Poetry is definitely not my thing. Some were cute but overall I was not.impressed, and I am not sure if children would enjoy this. 3 stars

This is a collection of poems, mostly for children and some also for adults, focused on the lore and places and weather and writers of Atlantic Canada. The region is well-represented here, with poems about St John's and the Bay of Fundy and other locations. Many of the poems are excellent; a few are tedious in the manner of all pedantic poems for children. There are songs and story-poems and poems about mermaids and fish and candy and children freezing to death and hockey and ghosts and bees and falcons and flowers. It's hard to tell how many BIPOC writers are included in the collection, but many of the poems are clearly from a settler-colonialist point of view, and there were none that I could identify that were from First Nations poets, lore, or traditions, which I find very problematic.

For young readers.
I think this is a nice introduction to prose & poetry for children/young readers. My favorite section was the "wonder" & "whimsy" sections because it felt the most magical. It is pretty think and could take a younger reader a while to get through but there are tons of cute poems that are nice for any age.

*I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review*.

You seldom get a poetry collection, whether for the young audience or the adult, that is fully packed with success, but I might have hoped for a bit more consistency with these pages. Perfectly well-meaning, with its approach to portray Atlantic Canadian verse and word artists who write for juniors, and to inspire familial reading together long after it might not strictly be necessary, I was on board with the intention, but not the editors' opinions as to their success. The first section, where a kind of novelty verse inflects word play and suchlike, was more miss than hit, which surprised me. Stretching the form to list poems for young readers has to be done carefully, and this wasn't. We have a section on weather, nature and the outdoors life next, where for every awkward piece we have a 'North Dance', which was one of the few really memorable works, and its author was one I'd take much more note of than some knighted older, canon-fitting chap. L M Montgomery was the only person here previously known to me, by the way. Back to the whimsy, and the boyish urge to eat like a carefree pig is a highlight. The final spread, 'Whispers', concerns the vocal tradition, and all the many legends of place and folklore Canada clearly has. I'll concede to not being the target audience for this section, for it very much is for those living in that region, but I will testify the rest disappointed for knowing how little I would have enjoyed it as a schoolchild. If all I can really close a notice with is the fact it had a surprisingly high female proportion to its content then you know it didn't impress as much as one would hope.

I’m trying to broaden my horizons and poetry is honestly not usually something I would pick up, however I loved this! Cute, whimsical poems/verses that made me smile 😁
Favourites were an april morning, The balloon man, in grandmas attic and there’s only one you.
Nice little collection 😍

This is a beautiful collection of poetry about the world: animals, weather, seasons, the magic of the natural world, the wonder and whimsy of a child’s perspective and way of engaging with the world. It’s very readable and seems like it could easily be a classic children’s collection that both parents and children will love to read.

But there’s a big caveat. I think the editors had a glaring oversight: the omission of more than a smattering of writers of color. There are a few Black, Indigenous, and Latinx writers (like Rita Joe and Shauntay Grant), but it’s an awfully white-washed collection. It’s a shame, since the collection really is beautiful and will without a doubt resonate with and be captivating for children. But when there are so many talented writers and poets who are BIPOC, there’s just no excuse for having a collection that only nominally includes voices of color.

The editors really formed a cohesive message about nature and childhood, and I hope next time they’ll make a concerted effort to add representative voices.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advance copy!