I knocked out all of the shortlisted poetry books from the Cybils list last night:
African Acrostics
The Bill Martin Jr Big Book of Poetry
The Monsterologist
Red Sings from Treetops
The Tree that Time Built
I enjoyed The Monsterologist quite a bit. Quick, amusing, great illustrations. African Acrostics was excellent, a nice way to expose kids to a different kind of poetry. The best thing about the Bill Martin Jr Big Book of Poetry is it’s just another Bill Martin Jr book and they all kind of read the same to me. Red Sings from Treetops almost put me to sleep but I soldiered on to my favorite of the bunch…. The Tree that Time Built.
The Tree that Time Built comes with a CD, which I haven’t listened to yet – but I have high hopes for it. The book itself was more than I expected. Poems from great poets. (Langston Hughes, D.H. Lawrence, Mary Oliver, Christina Rossetti… I could go on, but you get the picture….) A brilliant mix of science, nature and poetry with excellent footnotes that are interesting and don’t feel like something I’d skip over because it’s just boring.
Check out the brilliant, Sharing the Seasons/Hopkins/Diaz
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