hosted today by Ms. Yingling Reads
(pub. 3.1.2012) 32 pages
A True Tale with A Cherry On Top
A uthor: Amy Gibson
and Illustrator: Steve Bjorkman
C haracters: Spring rain and friends
O verview from the jacket flap:
"When one little girl and her dog venture out on a rainy spring day, friends from the neighborhood join her, and what results is squishy, sloshy, muddy-day fun.
A celebration of nature and friendship, Split! Splat! is every child's answer to 'Rain, Rain, Go Away!'"
T antalizing taste:
"I sing a little mud song,
a puddle song,
a muddle song,
a no-shoes, toes-ooze,
slip-slap-and-thud song.
Splish
sploosh,
squash
squoosh,
oochy sploochy woochy woosh!"
and something more: I was very excited in March to receive Split! Splat!, this new book by my writer friend, Amy Gibson. I decided I would wait to publish my post until it was true springtime in honor of the spring rain in her book. And somehow it's already May! So it's high time for me to share my excitement about this book. It's an absolute delight to read this book out loud with Amy's wonderful rain-and-squashing-about-in-the-mud onomatopoeia -- "splish sploosh, squash squoosh" and "oochy sploochy woochy woosh."
Amy's wonderful poem reminds me of this spring poem I memorized in grade school ... true spring delights ... to dance with the daffodils ... or to frolic in the rain with Split! Splat!
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
--- William Wordsworth
