This book, Black Swan White Crow is a collection of nineteen haiku poems. Haikus are hard for people to understand usually. The Haiku's in this book are about nature and animals. I think the illustrations help the reader to further understand what the poem is trying to say. There are a lot of personification and descriptive words. ( )

I have to admit before giving this review that I am not too big on haikus. I think if I spoke Japanese and could read them in that language it would be different but I can only imagine how much translated just isn't the same. That being said I enjoyed this book. I think the author did a great job making them kid friendly. My favorite was, "Snowdrifts to his knees, a scarecrow left with nothing up his sleeve." Just like the author's book, Bigfoot is Missing, I liked how he included facts on the first page. In this case he gives the reader a lot of information about haikus that I have to admit I didn't know. ( )

Black Awan White Cow is a Haiku poetry book filled with great imagery on each page. I found this book to be difficult to understand and had to read each page more than once in able to understand what each poem meant. The author of the book Patrick Lewis used a dramatic voice, to mask each Haiku by speaking through the persona of things such as animals and nature. The author also uses a lot of personification, as he makes the animals and nature come alive. ( )

Most of the haiku in this book is overly simplistic, which might be good as an introduction to haiku for children but is still a bit bare in my opinion. The woodcut illustrations, however, are gorgeous. They're minimalist pieces using lots of silhouettes to create quiet, contemplative nature scenes. I'll look for other children's haiku before deciding whether or not the illustrations make this book worthwhile for my classroom. ( )

I picked the book because the title was different. I did not like this haiku because I did not truly understand. I don't know what the black swan is. The pictures were not very detailed but I loved them. They told the story. ( )