Up for Discussion-A Feast of Poetry

A knot of three fourth-grade boys motioned me over to the library's online catalog. "Mrs. Bock," Cory said, "we want some books like… that." He pointed to the book of poems on my storytelling bench—Big, Bad and a Little Bit Scary: Poems That Bite Back! (Viking, 2001), selected and vividly illustrated by Wade Zahares. Moments before, their class and I had been playing with the poems during a weekly library visit, delighting in the language and quickly memorizing a few selections just for the fun of it. This Ogden Nash classic, "The Panther," was a favorite:

The panther is like a leopard, Except it hasn't been peppered. Should you behold a panther crouch, Prepare to say Ouch. Better yet, if called by a panther, Don't anther.

There's usually a rush on whatever books I have booktalked so I had a pretty good idea what they were after. Still, like a good librarian, I didn't jump to conclusions and questioned them a little more. "You mean books with cool illustrations of animals?"

They glanced at each other. Cory spoke again, "No, not that, exactly."

"Oh, then you want a book that has those same poems in it?" I pulled an older anthology of poetry for children from the shelf and located several of the poems in the index, including Nash's poem. The book, however, was not illustrated.

"No… that's not exactly it."

"Come on guys, help me out here," I said.

"We want cool poems… that, you know, we can memorize.… about neat stuff," Cory replied. His buddies nodded in agreement. Then he added, "And it can't look boring."

Fortunately, given the remarkable new books of poetry for children, there was lots of "neat stuff" for the boys to choose from. Poetry by Heart: A Child's Book of Poems to Remember (Scholastic, 2001), edited by Liz Attenborough and illustrated by a host of accomplished artists, was an easy sell once we spotted Robert Louis Stevenson's "Windy Nights, " whose mysterious stanzas are so fun to recite:

Whenever the trees are crying aloud, And ships are tossed at sea, By, on the highway, low and loud, By at the gallop goes he. By at the gallop he goes, and then By he comes back at the gallop again.

The poetry shelves are among the busiest in my K–5 library, competing admirably with the most popular series. Why? The new collections appeal not only to the children's natural ear for the rhythms and rhymes of poetry, but also to their highly developed visual intelligence. From woodcuts to watercolors, collage to pastels, illustrators are enticing a range of readers from young children to adolescents to experience the unique joys of poetry.

In David Frampton's The Whole Night Through: A Lullaby (HarperCollins, 2001), illustrated with his own bold woodcuts, very young children will identify with a leopard cub who stubbornly stays awake while all the other jungle animals are peacefully snoozing. Bold shapes, friendly expressions, and bright colors set against a purple night sky complement the rich poetic language.

There are several new collections that help children appreciate their own environment in new ways and connect positively with those for whom that environment is foreign. Carole Boston Weatherford's Sidewalk Chalk: Poems of the City (Boyds Mills, 2001), illustrated by Dimitrea Tokunbo, brings a child's city neighborhood to life with vivid illustrations and poems that celebrate buzzing street corners, city markets, churches, beauty parlors, loving families, and ice-cone-sharing buddies. Here is where a child's "…dreams take root/in concrete,/and my branches/lift the sky."

Jorge Argueta's bilingual picture book, A Movie in My Pillow/Una película en me almohada (Children's Book Press, 2001), illustrated with bright color and detail by Elizabeth Gómez, invites readers into the bewildering but often wonder-filled world of a new immigrant whose family has fled a civil war in El Salvador. The poems are the poet's memories and his dreams: "Many nights/we would go to bed/without eating/We would look up/at the stars—/the stars were our soup."

Kristine O'Connell George's Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems (Clarion, 2001), illustrated by Kate Kiesler, shares with children the adventures at a wooded lakeside campsite. The illustrations are so vivid that the experience of sleeping under the stars becomes real, both for those who have been camping and for those who have not.

Some poetry collections scream: "Look! Look! You'll be delighted at what you see!" James Stevenson's Just around the Corner (Greenwillow, 2001), which he also illustrated in his trademark scribbled ink and watercolor style, takes a poetic stroll and surprises readers at every turn. Here Christmas trees are "…captives/Tied with twine [who whisper] of the frozen woods back home" and umbrellas wonder about a world where "Every time they go outside,/it's raining."

Douglas Florian has added another whimsical title to his already impressive publishing accomplishments with Lizards, Frogs, and Polliwogs (Harcourt, 2001). Illustrated with his signature watercolors done on primed brown paper bags, his poems are clever, informative, and at times hilarious.

Two oversized poetry collections are books of pure wonder: Naomi Shihab Nye's Come with Me: Poems for a Journey (Greenwillow, 2000), with images by Dan Yaccarino, and Leaf by Leaf: Autumn Poems (Scholastic, 2001), selected by Barbara Rogasky, with photographs by Marc Tauss. Yaccarino's bold collage constructions are intriguing creations that both interpret and enhance the meaning of Nye's quiet poems. Tauss's crisp, evocative photographs flood the pages with images that urge readers to stop and ponder deeper meanings of some of the world's most beloved poetry.

And then there is Jack Prelutsky's Awful Ogre's Awful Day (Greenwillow, 2001), illustrated by the masterful hand of Paul O. Zelinsky. It is filled with disgusting images befitting its disgusting Ogre narrator: a dripping nose, gargoyle bile, ghoul on toast, a bone collection, and nasty maggots. Kids love it!

Paul B. Janeczko's compilations are always well selected and appreciated by teachers and students alike. In A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems (Candlewick, 2001), the pages vibrate with spinning, drooping, springing, growing, graphically arranged words. Brilliantly accompanied by Chris Raschka's zany, stylized collage figures, the collection will inspire readers to create their own shapely verses.

Older adolescent readers will find much to identify with in Roots & Flowers: Poets and Poems on Family (Holt, 2001), an anthology edited by Liz Rosenberg, featuring 40 poets. Each one offers a short biographical narrative illustrated with personal photographs, followed by poems related to some aspect of family. The intimate poems are loving, angry, sad, funny, and at times profane, embracing the full range of emotions.

Poetry also has been showing up in unexpected places—in novels and in information books—and for readers of all ages. Sharon Creech's Love That Dog (HarperCollins, 2001) takes readers along on a boy's reluctant journey into poetry, led by a masterful teacher, Miss Stretchberry. Written in spare free verse, the story develops in Jack's journal where his confusion and evolving understanding are deftly captured:

What was up with
the snowy woods poem
you read today?
Why doesn't the person just
keep going if he's got
so many miles to go
before he sleeps?

Vera Williams's Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart (Greenwillow, 2001), a story in poems and pictures, creates a poignant portrait of two young sisters who take care of one another in very difficult circumstances. "Amber is brave/She went right up/to ask the Avakians if she could please/use their phone because, she explained,/ours is turned off/till my mother can pay the bill."

Karen Hesse, who received the Newbery Award for Out of the Dust (1997), has written yet another engaging book for older readers in the same free-verse style based on a historical event. Through the eyes of 11 characters, Witness (2001, both Scholastic) tells the frightening story of the gradual infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan into a Vermont town in 1924. Newspaper editor Reynard Alexander ponders the Ku Klux Klan's claim to be a patriotic organization: "what is a 100 percent american?/what of catholics, jews, negroes,/citizens of any other race or color born here,/whose fathers were born here,/ and grandfathers./are they not every bit as 100 percent american as the klan?"

Jan Greenberg has edited a handsome work of nonfiction in Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art (Abrams, 2001), recently named a Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book. Accomplished modern poets were asked to write about art pieces as varied as an Edward Hopper painting and a Charles M. Russell sculpture. The resulting marriage of art forms deepens the power of each image. Jane Yolen's "Grant Wood: American Gothic" examines an American icon with fresh eyes.

Every April, poetry moves into the spotlight in classrooms and libraries across the country as we celebrate National Poetry Month. This focus is welcome, for the subjects for poetry are infinite, as is the potential for generating excitement in young readers today. The many recent beautifully illustrated books are hard for even the most reluctant readers to resist, and poetic fiction and nonfiction are adding creative dimensions to traditional genres. Poets, anthologists, and illustrators alike are demonstrating a fresh attitude, welcoming a whole new generation to this time-honored genre. The trick is to have these books available so that when kids like Cory and his buddies are tracking down "neat stuff," they'll find lots of it on our library shelves, and not just in April.