How Elegant the Elephant: Poems About Animals and Insects
by Mary Ann Hoberman; illus. by Marla Frazee
Primary    Tingley/Little, Brown    88 pp.
3/25    9780316417129    $20.99
e-book ed.  9780316584968    $12.99

As an introduction by the late Hoberman explains, for this collection she selected favorite poems of hers “about animals and insects” from past books no longer in print and also wrote eight new poems. Frazee’s delightfully energetic pencil and watercolor illustrations bring together the verses into a cohesive new whole—she sets them at an animal hotel, complete with a spa, yoga classes, and a chocolate fountain. Characters recur (the squirrel bellhops are kept busy), and some subjects are creatively reinterpreted (the extinct brachiosaurus can’t be a guest, but it can provide the shape for the playground slide). The poems themselves are full of whimsical wildlife observations (“I often wonder whether / The rhinoceros’s leather / Is as bumpy on the inside / As it is upon the skinside”) and satisfyingly show off Hoberman’s facility with wordplay and with rhyme, meter, and inventive line breaks (“birds / need / bird / seed / bird / seed / feeds / birds / birds / sing / bird / songs / songs / with / bird /words”). A hotel worth checking into—and a collaboration worth checking out.

From the ">May/June 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.