Finding Treasure

When a teacher asks his students to bring in something they collect, one girl is at a loss since she doesn’t collect anything. Checking with her family members and friends, she discovers that they all collect something: teapots, snow globes, baseball cards, trains, and clocks are a few of the highly prized items. The brightly colored, digitally created illustrations reveal the many types of collections people own. At least one full page is devoted to each collection and the child describes them in a variety of poetic forms from rhyming couplets to free verse. One example of her poetry is called “My Mother’s Button Box” and begins: “Shiny ones/of shell and glass./Pearly circles,/swirls of brass./Anchors snipped/from navy coats./Plastic hearts,/wooden boats.” Readers will be both surprised and pleased when they find out what the child has decided to collect. The author provides information on how to begin a collection, including a web address for clubs for collectors. VERDICT This title will inspire children to at least consider beginning a collection if they don’t already have one.
—School Library Journal