Reviews

Calling the Doves/El canto de las palomas by Juan Felipe Herrera, Elly Simmons

crystal_reads's review

4.0

Juan Felipe Herrera is the United States Poet Laureate so this was a great book to read for poetry month. In Calling the Doves/El canto de las palomas, Herrera shares about his childhood with a lyrical voice. Readers find out about the beauty of the land he lived in and the care and nurture he had from his parents. His parents loved the open sky and the tender earth. They taught him "that inside every word there can be kindness." His parents were migrant farmworkers and life was not easy. Herrera makes it clear though, that he appreciated many aspects of his childhood. His parents were storytellers and they filled the air with poetry, songs and stories. Juan Felipe Herrera shows the many ways in which his childhood was rich and how this shaped him and led him to poetry.

circleofreadersdruid's review

4.0

Calling the Doves brings some beautiful images to the mind's eye. I can't wait to try some of Herrera's poetry, because even these lines from a picture book thrill me:

The sky was my blue spoon,
the wavy clay of the land was my plate.

Inside it was a warm cave of conversations.

Rhyming words would pour out of her mouth and for a moment the world would stop spinning.

I wasn't wild about Elly Simmons' artwork. I hope I'm not becoming a picture book elitist.

brucefarrar's review

5.0

In this 1995 memoir the poet laureate (of California in 2012, and of the United States in 2015) recalls his pre-school childhood while traveling with his parents, migrant farmworkers, from crop to crop in California. He remembers, sleeping under the stars, the call of wolves at night, the turkeys who chased him, and his father singing like a dove and his mother spontaneously reciting poetry at dinner, and the colors of everything.

Simmons’s bright palette and sweeping lines beautifully vivify the illustrations.