Nature’s Remarkable Partners: Wild Poems for Two Voices

Gr 3-7–Relationships make the world go round, and they are especially important in nature. With a honey bee and a daisy as guides, readers will find out how some animals and plants live in symbiotic relationships through poetry. Pairs included range from the mountain treeshrew and the pitcher plant to human beings and gut bacteria. Honey Bee and Daisy are a fun pair who take readers on a journey that is approximately 75 percent an ecology and zoology lesson, and 25 percent poetry practice. Each relationship is introduced by the pair in poetic form, with differentiated lines and text color for children to practice reading aloud in pairs if they choose. Following that, there is a more traditional informative paragraph or two about the relationship, with artwork depicting the animals or plants. The illustrations for the poetic narrators is more cartoony, while the nature relationships are more realistic in appearance. Back matter includes more about poems for two voices, a glossary of terms and organisms introduced in the book, information on the different types of poems, more on nature’s wild relationships, and a bibliography.