Coconut Kind of Day: Island Poems (Picture Puffins Series)

by Lynn Joseph

Book Overview

In language that rings with Caribbean rhythm, Joseph follows a young girl in Trinidad through her day on the island. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140545271
• ISBN13: 9780140545272
• Release Date: April 1992
• Publisher: Puffin Books
• Length: 32 Pages
• Weight: 2.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.8" x 0.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Coconut Kind of Day

In language rich with Caribbean tones and sounds, Lynn Joseph casts her fishing net and pulls a school of readers in with the tide, giving "boys and girls who aren't familiar with the Caribbean a glimpse into another child's world." A woman of the island herself, Joseph writes the poems from the perspective of a young Trinidad girl. Beginning with "Morning Songs," the poems flow naturally across the pages as a Caribbean day unfolds. Before day's end, the girl is greeted by the "ebony man selling mangoes and papaws in the street," has school escapades, and sees "Mama gone to market with the figs upon her head." The pleasures and secrets of the island are revealed throughout, as in "The Palet Man" (Caribbean ice-cream man), and "Steel Drum," which beckons readers to hear the drum's "pom da de de de dom pom." Text-enhancing, full-page illustrations, bursting with Caribbean life, leave lingering images behind. Glorious colors depict everything from the multi-hued blue water where Brother swims "till he touch high heaven on a wave," to the all too real "Jumbi Man" (Caribbean boogie-man) with his "monkey face." Joseph craftily uses metaphors to construct new images from the familiar. In "Pullin' Seine," the evening ritual of fishermen pulling nets in from the sea, Joseph skillfully places the text, creating an image of the net's heaving and hawing, as fishermen begin, struggle, and successfully pull their net in. While the book is an excellent read-aloud for all ages, the text's level of difficulty along with the unfamiliar Caribbean words make it an appropriate independent-read for children ages eight and older.