MORE 'POETRY' POSTS
You want something high class and snazzy? You know who to turn to. Today I sit down (virtually) with Marilyn Singer and I pull no punches, people! Good thing I really like today's book.
By my thinking you can never have enough nonsense taking up residence in a human brain. Calef Brown's latest just proves it.
Do you remember that scene in Orlando by Virginia Woolf where a bunch of witty people are in a room saying witty things and then Alexander Pope walks in and says three things so devastatingly witty that he just destroys everything? That’s what happens when Climbing Shadows gets paired alongside other collections of poetry. Smart. Honestly heartfelt. Utterly beautiful to look at. See the bar? Yeah. It just got raised.
Gather round me, ye children. I know we're in May, but poetry can shine every day of the year if it wants to. This is all the new good stuff. You know you wanna know what's worthy.
Simler has previously wowed American audience with such books as Plume and the magnificent The Blue Hour. Now, thanks in part to the elegant translation by Sarah Ardizzone, she has crafted a new kind of bedtime book. One rooted in poetry, dreams, seasons, fuzzy noses, lilting words, and a type of scratch art never before made possible.
Poems used to be the sole property of April a.k.a. Poetry Month. Now that's changing. Publishers are rapidly putting more faith into the poetry books they produce. So let's take a look at what we saw this year, and the wide range of topics that were touched.
Jabberwalking By Juan Felipe Herrera Candlewick Press $22.99 ISBN: 9781536201406 Ages 10 and up On shelves now Not too long ago I taught a six-week summer creative writing course for teens. Now I’ve never taught creative writing before. Truth be told, I had no idea where to start. So, like any good librarian, I hit […]
Seeing Into Tomorrow Haiku by Richard Wright Biography and illustrations by Nina Crews Millbrook Press (a division of Lerner) $19.99 ISBN: 978-1-5124-1865-1 Ages 6-10 On shelves now I hate that phrase, “A picture’s worth a thousand words”. It’s trite. Simplistic. And horrendously true. Pictures have power. Take the story that’s been handed to us about […]
Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes and Friendship By Irene Latham & Charles Waters Illustrated by Sean Qualls & Selina Alko Carolrhoda Books (a division of Lerner) $17.99 ISBN: 978-1-5124-0442-5 Ages 6 and up On shelves now For a long time, maybe as long as children’s books have been published in America, […]
P-p-p-poetry! Motto: It’s not just for April anymore. In a given year I tend to run out of poetry books for kids to review. I’ll find five or six spectacular ones, and then a handful of hundrum okay-but-not-great titles to fill in the gaps. 2017 changed the rules on me. Suddenly I found myself with […]