This poetry book covers the authors thought and feelings of the world around based on nature. The lesson in this book teaches students about nature around them by describing what goes on through poetry. Some things the author writes about include bees working in the summer, the moon in space, and the music of crickets. ( )

Cricket Never Does is a series of Haiku and Tanka poems filled with beautiful imagery in each stanza. Although Haiku poems are my least favorite poetry, I enjoyed this book and appreciated how Mayra Cohn Livingston organized it. The author used personification to make the small poems come alive, as she talked about nature. I also liked how the book was divided into four different sections- Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Each Season explored different forms of nature that allow the reader to get in touch with the world through the imagery included in each stanza. ( )

Disappointing. Livingston isn't usually this simplistic, this cliched. Still, it's accessible for young readers without being trite, so it is of some value.

I like:

Look how the birds turn
the telephone lines into
a musical staff!

And I love:

One chrysanthemum
in a a vase, watching over
Second Avenue.

I do not like the anthropomorphism of many, such as:

Only a blue jay
would swoop down so low trying
to annoy our cat!

This next is authentic - we here who live under the Carson Range often look out at storms above and say Who took the mountains!?"

Suddenly earth, sky,
tree, and mountain are carried
off, shrouded in fog.

So, yes, a little something for everyone here.

Fewer exclamation points, more pictures, and definitions of or notes about Haiku and Tanka would have helped." ( )

Haiku poetry collection with a nature theme is presented.

The book would be useful as an example of Haiku for children. ( )

Short explosions of imagery. ( )