Finding poems that appeal to children is not easy. They have to be just the right length, have the right tone, and the right kind of rhyme. Thankfully, there are people out there who are willing to do what it takes to find out what works for children. One of these people is Bruce Lansky, and today I have a review of a book that he worked one, a book that is packed with poems that children chose.
Selected by Bruce Lansky
Illustrated by Stephen Carpenter
Poetry
For ages 6 to 8
Meadowbrook, 1991, 978-0671747695
Most of the time the poems in poetry anthologies are
chosen by adults. For this collection the editor, Bruce Lansky, asked children
what their favorite poems were. He then read through all the poems that were
chosen, twenty thousand in number, and then chose five hundred that he thought
would best interest young readers. Bruce then presented these five hundred
poems to a panel of three hundred elementary school children and they told him
which of these they liked best. The interesting thing about this process is
that all the poems that were chosen are funny. Some were written by famous
poets such as Dr. Seuss and Ogden Nash, while others were written by wonderful poets
who are not as well known.
The collection
is divided into nine topic sections, each one of which focuses on one
particular subject. The topics chosen include parents, siblings, friends,
disasters and monsters, which are the kinds of subjects that children are
interested in.
We begin with
poems about “Me,” which are all written from the point of view of a child. In
the first one the narrator is “glad that I am me.” Even though people stare at him
when he behaves in ways that other people consider odd, he is determined that
he is “not going to change and be someone I’m not.” In another me poem another
child daydreams about all the things he would like to do and say to the
grownups who inflict things on him. He’d like to “give the nurse the shot” and “send
my mother to her room,” and best of all he dreams of being able to say “‘Cause
I said so!”
The next topic
in the book is one that all children will appreciate because it is about
parents. It explores the ways in which parents curtail children’s activities
and make them do things that they, naturally, think are very unreasonable;
things like eating liver and learning good manners. Some of the poems tell deliciously
funny stories about parents whose children somehow get the better of them.
The humor found
in these poems is sometimes subtle, and sometimes it is just all out funny.
Children will enjoy dipping into the book to find an amusing poem that lifts
their spirits and that helps them to remember that though life has its trials,
it is also full of good times, good books, and wonderful poetry.
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