Ivy Van Allsberg just wants spring to come! Can you blame her? All of the birds and flowers and sunshine are delightful!

The bibliography to show how this book was crafted was one hundred percent the best part. As an adult reader reading a children's novel, that is what really drew me in. Kids will love the fun pictures and the story, but I loved seeing how it was made. Books like this where there is something for the kids, and then something for the parent or educator really stand out to me!

My biggest negative is that the rhyming felt very forced at times. Some of the lines were truly timeless and felt very right, but some of them didn't sound as good. The second page is where I cringed at the rhymes, but the rest didn't fall flat like that one did for me. One line doesn't ruin a book though!

Other positives notes:
1. I absolutely LOVE the cover of the edition I was given from NetGalley. The little girl standing on "In" and the pretty flowers set the scene just right.

2. And not just the cover, all of the pictures within this book. They are cartoon-y and yet so classic!

3. I'm pretty much Ivy. I relate way too much.

Overall, this book is a sweet little read! The poetry is lovely and the pictures are awesome. I'd highly recommend this book for young readers.

Four out of five stars.

I received this book for free from NetGalley. ( )

Free preview ARC from Netgalley for an honest review.

I love books that get children into poetry, and this was an amazing example of exactly the kind of way I think you can get children to love it, with the adorable main character and a topic we all start feeling when the winter hangs around too long in the early spring and we are wishing for warmth, flowers and green to burst back into life.

I, also, love the way the more famous poems of the same topic are tucked into the part of the book after Ivy's poems from Winter to Spring, and are lined up with the pictures of whate she was talking about in her poem where, and then matching it to our late great writers to scaffold up the understanding and integration of these historical writings into the enjoyment of the young readers. ( )

A clever idea, to collect excerpts of poems about spring into one story for children, but it wasn't executed as well as I would have liked. I would have preferred longer excerpts--perhaps a full stanza instead of just a phrase or sentence--and less splicing. (Oelschlager would take one word from one line in a poem, a phrase from the next line, and another word from the line after that, for example.)

However, the artwork is beautiful, illustrating the transition from winter to spring with a change in colors. And the method of citation is smartly done: each page from the story is shown along with its source poem, the words Oelschlager excerpted highlighted in a different color, and the name of each poem and its author are provided.

Note: I received a digital copy of this book through NetGalley. ( )

Ivy in Bloom is a fun way to introduce your children or child to poems by some very popular poets that are still too complicated for them to understand! the illustration's in this book just add to the joy and the enjoyment of the story! It was beautiful to see Ivy's gray world come to life on the pages! This would be a great introduction into the poetry world for the kids and there are so many activities you can do to help bring each part to life for them!

Thank you for sharing this book with me! It was a lovely addition to our home school curriculum! ( )

3.5/5 stars

I loved the drawings in this one, the inky blackness of the lines, combined with the watercolour colours was really pretty and impressive. They also matched the poetry lines brilliantly, and made the whole thing into a story, instead of just selected sentences from poems.

I liked the bibliography in the back, and how it was build up, although I'm inclined to say it would've been nice if the authors were identified on the page with the line and the drawing.

The only thing I didn't like about this whole book was the couple of instances where the quotes were reassembled (as in leaving part of the original line out e.g. in the book 'Give me sunbeams dazzling', original line by W. Whitman: 'Give me the splendid silent sun with all his bams full-dazzling.')

All in all, a really cute book.

I received a copy through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )