The Dirt Book: Poems about Animals That Live Beneath Our Feet by David L. Harrison

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Dirt Book: Poems about Animals That Live Beneath Our Feet by David L. Harrison Elizabeth Bush Harrison, David L. The Dirt Book: Poems about Animals That Live Beneath Our Feet; illus. by Kate Cosgrove. Holiday House, 2021 [40p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780823438617 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 2-5 “Creatures large and small retreat/where boulders rest and tree roots drink./There’s more to dirt than we might think.” So advises David Harrison, who offers fifteen poems in a satisfying variety of poetic forms to explore the vitality, benign and sinister, that hums along underground, largely ignored by humans. He begins with musings on the composition of dirt and the tangle of roots that host hidden life, then turns to specific animals that generally evade our view, from earthworms (“Earthworm crawls./earthworm creeps, /earthworm tunnels, /rarely sleeps”) to the moles that prey upon them (“furry demons on patrol/working where it’s black as coal./Tracking down a worm’s the goal/of every tiny mole troll soul”). Like many readers, he’s not a fan of lawn-wrecking grubs and burrowing yellow jacket wasps, but he delights in darting chipmunks (“Chipmunk, for such a little squirt/you sure do move a lot of dirt”) and the hospitable gopher tortoise (“Patiently he walks around their nests, /gently moves some bunnies in his way./He never shows them if he thinks they’re pests”). The vertical double spread layout showcases activity at different depths, with Cosgrove’s lush colored pencil and digital renderings an array of sophisticated colors and designerly patterns that fairly begs to be translated to fabric print. End matter comprises a chatty paragraph of additional information and a brief bibliography for each poem. [End Page 381] Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois