Many children like to watch animals in zoos and on television. They like to read about real animals in books, and many picture book authors and illustrators use animals as their main characters because they know that their young readers are will be drawn to their creations. Poets too like to write about animals, and today's title is literally packed with animal poems of all kinds.
Book Of Animal Poetry
Book Of Animal Poetry
Edited by J. Patrick Lewis
Poetry
For ages 5 to 8
National Geographic, 2012, 978-1-4263-1009-6
Many poets love to describe nature and animals in the
poems that they write. Some like to go a step further and they “try to imagine
the secret lives of animals.” What is it like to be an animal, and to see its
world through the eyes of that creature?
In this
remarkable collection of two hundred poems we encounter animals that have just
come into the world, those that are big, those that are small, the winged ones,
the ones that live in water, the strange ones, the noisy ones and the quiet
ones. Some of the poems were written many decades ago and capture the feeling
of a different time. Others are more modern and reflect a more contemporary
approach to poetry writing. There are poems that rhyme and those that are
written in blank verse. Some are funny and others are more completive.
What makes this
collection so special is that the poets don’t only write about animals that are
commonplace. They embrace the whole animal kingdom from big whales “always
spouting fountains,” to little ladybugs, “Smaller/ than a button, / bigger than
a spot.” We drift on the wings of “six geese / rowing across a full moon” and plunge
deep into oceans with a seal who “swims / With a swerve and a twist, / a flip
of the flipper, / a flick of the wrist.”
Some of the
animals are strangely creepy, like the piranha who will consider “you’re meat”
should you ever encounter it. Others are weird but funny, like the baby
porcupine who, though it cannot yet climb trees can still raise its quills “and
pirouette.” Then there is the armadillo which “From head to tail / It wears a
scratchy coat of mail.” Meerkats, anteaters, frilled lizards, sting rays and
other oddities also appear on the pages.
Throughout the book the poems are paired with
stunning full-color photographs to give readers an extraordinary journey into
the world of animals. The photos provide a wonderful backdrop for poems written
by Jane Yolen, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Frost, Hilaire Belloc, Michael J.
Rosen, Ogden Nash and others.
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