April is poetry month, a wonderful time to share poetry with the child in your life. Poetry written especially for children is perfect for those developing brains: because poems for children tend to be short, they are great for children’s limited attention spans, and the rhyming common in poems for children helps them learn about word patterns. Writing in verse requires the poet to be very careful with their words, often choosing one word to take the place of several, which can introduce children to vocabulary they may not typically hear. All of these factors are key for children developing early literacy skills. Reading poetry to a child is a wonderful way to show them the beauty of language and help them develop a love of reading.
Awesome Earth, opens a new window by Joan Bransfield Graham, illustrated by Tania García
Some rhyming, others not, all of these poems describe the Earth and its features in a succinct way that is easy for children to digest and rare to find in books about geography. One unique feature of this collection is that the way the words are arranged on each page and in relation to each other makes a shape that is related to the subject of the poem. This is sometimes called concrete poetry, and it is really fun to have both the meaning of the words and the visual look of the words on the page support each other. For example, the words for the poem “Continents” are laid out on the page in the shape of two continents. The words for the poems “Stalactites” and “Stalagmites” are laid out to form pointy shapes, emphasizing unique characteristics of these formations.
A Forest Song, opens a new window by Kirsten Hall, illustrated by Evan Turk
In the backmatter of this book, Hall explains that “A Forest Song” is a cento poem, created by putting together lines and words from other poets’ works in a new way to form a new poem. In this case, Hall brings together lines of poetry from well-known poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, all on the theme of woods and forests. The result is a vibrant yet gentle, almost magical description of a child’s walk through the trees as they observe all the natural life around them.
Home, opens a new window by Isabelle Simler
Each of these poems are written from the first-person point of view of an animal, where it shares in detail the features of its home and how it was created. From the comet moth’s silky pouch made from “a single strong, silvery thread” to the golden eagle’s “throne under a ledge” and the “wax palace” of the honeybee, Simler composes a detailed poem about each creature’s home that sparks awe and describes life from their singular view.
How Elegant the Elephant, opens a new window by Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrated by Marla Frazee
These are my favorite kinds of children’s poems: rhyming with a bouncy cadence that lends itself naturally to a sing-songy recitation. Poems are meant to be read aloud, after all! The wordplay and humor are sure to get children giggling, and some of these poems may get adult readers tongue-tied. Some of these poems are very short, some a bit longer, and all are silly and fun.
Poor Mister Seal
How do you feel
With only fish
To fill your dish?
Raindrops to Rainbow, opens a new window by John Micklos, Jr., illustrated by Charlene Chua
The sounds of rain lend themselves perfectly to verse:
Plip--plop,
plip--plop,
Plip--plip--plop.
As a little girl waits for the rain to stop so she can go out and play, the rhyming cadence of the text matches her impatient energy. Finally when the rain ends and she can go outside, the text erupts along with her happiness:
Pull red rain boots
on our feet.
Find some puddles
by the street.
The Smell of Wet Dog, opens a new window by Barney Saltzberg
Saltzberg loves dogs and has written 27 short poems to sing their praises, note their quirks, and honor their devotion. Puppies, aged dogs, lazy dogs, hyper dogs, little dogs, big dogs, yappy dogs and quiet dogs, they are all in here. Short, bouncy, spirited, funny poems honor the animal many children count as their best friend. One example is “Bed":
My dog is very happy
snoozing on my bed.
Sometimes I am her pillow
when she sleeps on my head.
Darcie Caswell is Director of Youth Services at CRRL. This column originally appeared in The Free Lance-Star newspaper.
