Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Poetry anyone?

Quote of the week:

"The greatest gift is a passion for reading.  It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind.  It is a moral illumination."
     
                         - Elizabeth Hardwick








This fabulous book features familiar authors such as Jane Yolen, who's imagination vivifies the reading experience as "Words/Nudge each other/like bumper cars/at the fair".....while Kristine O'Donnell celebrates the quiet side when she says "If you have a book....this great new book to read/Who needs a window seat?"  Bennett's appendix offers thumbnail biographies of each of his poets and his selections offer plenty of instructive examples of poetic language -- alliteration, onomatopoeia (love that word), smilie and metaphor -- and all of them offer vivid word pictures to delight the mind in the way that only a book can.

 A review from Amazon states:


In this picture-book collection from veteran anthologist Hopkins, 13 well-known children’s poets celebrate
how books can take readers on wild adventures (“I storm / toward shackled screams / of a kidnapped damsel”), as well as how plain words can reveal the surprising drama in ordinary things, even the rhyming sounds of a clock: “tick-tock / ding-dong / bing-bong.” Karla Kuskin speaks about the “wonders of
wandering / wonderful pages” and “the nonsense and knowledge” the come “tumbling out.” And in another selection, Kristine O’Connell George writes, “riding home from the library, / don’t need a window seat. / Got a great new book to read, / eleven more beneath my feet.” The whimsical, light-toned acrylic artwork extends the metaphors with witty, fantastical transformations of books: in one scene, a dark-blue
book cover becomes an ocean, where you can “dive in the sea of words and swim.” Fun for sharing with preschoolers, this will also spark discussion in grade-school writing and art classes. Notes about each poet are appended. (Booklist-Hazel Rochman )

All-in-all a winner to get your child reading and loving poetry.  Give it a try.  Blessings today and read on!

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