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Poetry Review #43

Poetry for Kids: William Shakespeare

Author: William Shakespeare
Editor: Dr. Marguerite Tassi
Illustrator: Merce Lopez
Publisher: MoonDance Press, 2018
ISBN: 978-1633225046
Reading Ages: 8-12 years
Genre: Children's Literary Biography,                             Children’s Poetry, Shared Poetry                        Readings

I Gave This Book 4 Roars! 🦁🦁🦁🦁

Why 4 Roars? I love the idea of this book. It is wonderful for younger thespians interested in Shakespeare. The dramatic dialogue and poetry in this collection are perfect for shared poetry reading sessions. I do think that some readers will have a difficult time with the meanings and comprehension. 

Poetic Elements: It's Shakespeare! Sonnets, anyone? (Little songs or sonetto, from the Latin word sonus meaning a sound.) You can find the 14 lines, a particular rhyming scheme, iambic pentameter, and a volta, or the turn from the problem to the solution, in many of the selections the editor used. 

"An enticing entree to the glories of Shakespeare's verse." 

~~ Kirkus Reviews

Appeal: The editor wisely pulled selections that might appeal to younger readers. However, there are some selections that lean heavily into romantic love, such as “Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds,” “Why Light Is Light, if Silvia Be Not Seen?,” and of course, “O Romeo, Romeo, Wherefore Art Thou Romeo?” 

Overall Quality: The selected poems are rich, vibrant, and very appealing. Children interested in Shakespeare will love the collection.

 "A richly illustrated selection of 31 poems and excerpts from Shakespeare's most popular works. The selected writings provide a fantastic scope of Shakespeare's oeuvre. ... López's illustrations are intricate, dramatic, and moody; they help bring life and meaning to the words." 

~~ School Library Journal

Layout: The book has an introduction, poems, a "What William Was Thinking" section, and an index. At the end of each poem there is also a short definition of difficult words.

Connections:
Spotlight Poem -

“Round About The Cauldron Go” 

(Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I)

"Round about the cauldron go;

In the poison’d entrails throw.

Toad, that under cold stone

Days and nights hast thirty one

Swelter’d venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble." 

~~William Shakespeare

Sharing—This would be perfect for performance poetry.

Activity - Shakespeare for Kids

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Poetry Review # 42

Emma's Poem: The Voice of the Statue of Liberty

Author: Linda Glaser
Illustrator: Claire A. Nivola
Publisher: HMH Books for 

                    Young Readers, 2013

ISBN: 978-0544105089
Reading Ages: 4 - 7 years
Genre: Children's Poetry, Immigration, Children's Sociology, Picture Book

I Gave This Book 5 Roars! 🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁

Why 5 Roars? This is a beautifully written book that should be in every library and classroom. It is hard to find anything negative to say about a wealthy woman that gave her voice to the poor and brought immigration into the spotlight.

Poetic Elements: This is a free-verse biography written for children. It is about Emma Lazarus, the poet that wrote "The New Colossus." This poem became one of the most recognized and honored poems in America. Both the free verse biography about Emma and Emma's poem are found in this work.

The biography does not rhyme but does have a rhythmic feel that brings Emma to life in a way that I think Emma would appreciate.

Appeal: Children whose families are immigrants can relate to the experience of being in a new country or culture.

“ The pictures, with their slight folk-art feel, capture both the time and action of the story, while the text illuminates the woman. An author’s note and the full text of the poem complete the book. A worthwhile addition for most collections." 

~~School Library Journal

Overall Quality: The artwork is lovely and fits with the biography's time period. It does not distract from the story but adds a distinct charm and a certain fascination to New York and its diversity.

"Nivola’s watercolor-and-gouache paintings are rich in color and detail, showing the elegant streets and homes of 19th-century New York City as well as its settlement houses. Line, pattern and a sense of place give young readers a rich vision of the "golden door" by which "your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" came to this country. Nicely done, enabling even young children to see how the poem and the statue came together."

~~Kirkus

Layout: The author's note and poem "The New Colossus" are located in the back of the book. It is such a large part of the importance of this work.

Connections:
Spotlight Poem -

"Even when Emma was all grown up,

and by then a well-known writer

she still only knew people

who had plenty of everything."

~~Emma's Poem: The Voice of the Statue of Liberty

"Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . . "

~~ The New Colossus

Sharing—This would be a great book to read before taking children to New York or the Statue of Liberty. 

Activity - The Statue of Liberty 

Poetry Review #41

Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials

Author: Stephanie Hemphill
Publisher: Balzer + Bray; Reprint, 2010
ASIN: B003MVZ5SQ
Format: eBook
Reading Ages: Teen & Young Adult - 9th grade & up

Genre: Period Historical Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Poetry, Free Verse Novel 

I Gave This Book 4 Roars! 🦁🦁🦁🦁

Why 4 Roars? I had mixed feelings about this book. I loved the writing, the flow, and the feeling. However, I think it became a little too modern for a historical piece written about this time period. 

I can see that the author was trying to establish a connection between contemporary young ladies of the present and those of the past. The slant of the book takes on the plight of young women that have very little control in their own lives. It is almost as if the author took young women from this time period and placed them in the 1600s.

It might be difficult for many teen readers to get past the "thees," "thous," and other word choices that they could stumble over in this book. 

Poetic Elements: The poetry works well for the book; it is beautifully written, pushes the reader to consider how young women were treated during the 1600s, and treats the wild hysteria as an eerie disruptive experience. The poetry is natural, graceful, and fits into this type of experience. 

“Hemphill follows her Printz Honor Book Your Own, Sylvia (2007) with another bold verse novel based on historical figures. Here, her voices belong to the ‘afflicted’ girls of Salem, whose accusations of witchcraft led to the hangings of 19 townspeople in 1692. Once again, Hemphill's raw, intimate poetry probes behind the abstract facts and creates characters that pulse with complex emotion. According to an appended author's note, unresolved theories about the causes of the girls' behavior range from bread-mold-induced hallucinations to bird flu. In Hemphill's story, the girls fake their afflictions, and the book's great strength lies in its masterful unveiling of the girls' wholly believable motivations: romantic jealousy; boredom; a yearning for friendship, affection, and attention; and most of all, empowerment in a highly constricting and stratified society that left few opportunities for women. Layering the girls' voices in interspersed, lyrical poems that slowly build the psychological drama, Hemphill requires patience from her readers. What emerge are richly developed portraits of Puritanical mean girls, and teens will easily recognize the contemporary parallels in the authentic clique dynamics. An excellent supplementary choice for curricular studies of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, this will also find readers outside the classroom, who will savor the accessible, unsettling, piercing lines that connect past and present with timeless conflicts and truths.” ~~Gillian Engberg

Appeal: The appeal is the effortless poetry and the unnerving qualities of the Salem Witch Trials that bleed into the story. 

“In subtle, spare first-person free-verse poems, the author skillfully demonstrates how ordinary people may come to commit monstrous acts. Haunting and still frighteningly relevant.”

~~ Kirkus Reviews

Overall Quality: The author is more than capable of creating emotions with her poetry, and this is not her first book written in free verse.

"The expressive writing, masterful tension, and parallels to modern group dynamics create a powerful and relevant page-turner."~~ Publishers Weekly

Layout: The layout is in a novel arrangement.

Connections:
Spotlight Poem - 

"Life is not for joy and jolly,

but for toil and test,

an order ordained." 

Sharing—A readers theater performance might work for sharing parts of this work.

Activity—This book would be good for a history project that centered on the topic of religious persecutions in early America.

Salem Witch Trials

Poetry Review #40

A Songbird Dreams of Singing: Poems about Sleeping Animals

Author: Kate Hosford
Illustrator: Jennifer M. Potter
Publisher: Running Press Kids, 2019
ISBN: 978-0762467143

Reading Ages: 4 - 8 years

Genre: Children's Poetry, Science, Nature

I Gave This Book 4 Roars! 🦁🦁🦁🦁

Why 4 Roars? The poetry and illustrations are beautiful. There is an additional short paragraph on the opposite page that talks about the sleeping habits of the selected animal in the poem. I would have liked to have seen a little more information about the animals and their sleeping patterns, but the information presented was interesting and fun. 

Poetic Elements: The rhythm and simplicity of the poems make it a great book for younger children. The combination of scientific information and lyrical imagery merges well.

"Firmly in control of language and rhyme schemes but varying tone and tempo as she goes, Hosford marvels at the sleep habits of 18 creatures. At once eye-closing and eye-opening."

~ Kirkus Reviews

Appeal: This collection of poems will appeal to animal lovers, nature lovers, and poetry lovers. The poems smooth out the rough edges of the hard scientific facts and make a great, comforting bedtime book for children.

        "Not only is [A Songbird Dreams of Singing] gorgeous and the poems so original and beguiling; the informational text is a total wow!"

~~ Sy Montgomery, author of the National Book Award finalist, The Soul of an Octopus.

Overall Quality: This assortment of poems would be a lovely, reassuring addition to a classroom or library.

"The work as a whole makes a unique, engaging read aloud from start to finish, and children may well pull it from the shelves again and again to revisit favorite excerpts."

 ~~Publishers Weekly

Layout: The poems are presented like a traditional children's picture book, with the addition of the informational paragraph opposite the poem. It does not feel disjointed or separate but reads more like a story.

Connections:
Spotlight Poem—My favorite poem in this collection is "Mother Otter Gives Advice to Her Pup." The author discusses how sea otters sleep in the water and "sometimes hold hands." 

"Sleeping otter, swirling sea,

Be careful not to float away.

Hold my hand—stay close to me,

Sleeping otter, swirling sea.

This kelp, so long and tangly

        Will help you not to go astray. 

Sleeping otter, swirling sea,

             Be careful not to float away!"

Sharing—This collection of poems would be a great way to calm students down before nap time or inspire conversations about nature and the sleeping behaviors of animals.

Activity - Sleep Education For School

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