Reviews
Dotlich uses her poetry to call up moments in a summer. She celebrates the small tantalizing creatures—bumblebees and butterflies, ladybugs and fireflies—and takes year-round pleasures and puts them outside under the sun: a game of jacks, the reading of a book. The best of her imagery is startling and memorable—whispering through a dragonfly's wing, the sidewalk song of a marble game; there are a number of poems that warrant immediate re-reading, both to pick up on the intimations and to experiment with the beat and wordplay. At least two jump-rope rhymes are worth memorizing; one is a Double-Dutch ditty, while the other could serve as a geography lesson.

—Kirkus Reviews

These child-friendly poems, simple but graced with the occasional fabulous image: sunflowers as "garden kings / with chocolate eyes" or a firefly as a "Rhinestone in / a jelly jar." ... The racially diverse cast of children who inhabit these sidewalks and meadows have individual charm; some, such as the Titian-haired moppet who peers from under a sunflower, could be portraits.

—GraceAnne A. Candido, Booklist