By David Elliott
Illustrated by Gordy Wright
Candlewick, 2025
32 pages
978-1-5362-2338-5
Ages 5-9
A standout collection of clever, engaging poems about animals and insects living in the Sahara begins by setting the desert scene, where sun “blinds the sky / and scrapes the land / clean like a butcher / with his favorite knife.” This ominous imagery foretells the danger posed by several predators—the desert horned viper, the deathstalker scorpion, the Nile crocodile—highlighted in the poems that follow. The writing incorporates subtle rhyme and clever wordplay. (The Saharan cheetah is “spotted,” which refers not only to its black-dotted coat but also the fact that its prey has seen it lurking nearby.) Wry humor abounds, as in the two-liner about the Nile crocodile (“What are you thinking of now, Old Grinner? / I’m thinking of you, my dear. I’m thinking of dinner”) and the two-worder on the desert hedgehog (“Yikes! / Spikes!”). The poems vary in length, but all are satisfying concise and artfully spotlight the distinctive and fascinating qualities of their animal subjects with admiration and respect. (The painted dog has a coat “so astonishing, / so original, / so rare.” The dung beetle’s “lowly work’s / determined / by the / stars. How / elegant!” The Nubian vulture, “the desert’s / hardest teacher” reminds us “that everything / must have its end.”) The collection concludes with additional trivia on the spotlighted creatures. ©2025 Cooperative Children’s Book Center