Most of the poems I read when I was young were story poems of some kind, or they described animals. Not many of the poems I encountered described places. Thankfully, these days poets for young people are exploring all kinds of topics in their writings, and today I bring you a collection of poems that take us to some of the amazing places that we can visit in the United States.
Amazing Places
Amazing Places
Poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins
Illustrated by Chris Soentpiet and Christy Hale
Poetry Picture Book
For ages 6 to 8
Lee and Low, 2015, 978-1-60060-653-3
The United States is a huge country, a country where
there are enormous mountain ranges, deep lakes, hot and dry deserts, muggy
swamps, bustling cities, and huge forests. It is a place where people can visit
museums full of works of art, and where stories from the past are told. It is a
land where children and adults alike can visit places where they can play
together and watch spectacles that dazzle them. It is a place where the beauty
of nature is magnificent and awe inspiring.
In this
wonderful poetry picture book, readers will encounter an array of poems,
collected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, that give us a picture of just a few of the
amazing places that we can visit in the United States. Some of the places are
man-made while others a gift from nature.
We begin in Denali National Park in Alaska,
where a mother and daughter are sitting by a campfire next to a lake. The
reflection of mountains lies across the water as the mother, who when she was
little “could build a fire / with sparks from rocks,” tells her daughter to
bring her a stick. Then the mother reaches into a brown paper bag and pulls out
a treat. It is time to toast some marshmallows.
Later on in the
book we visit the Watkins Museum of History in Lawrence, Kansas, and see a
display that tells visitors about a man called Langston Hughes. Langston once
was just a boy delivering newspapers in a small town, but he grew up to become
a poet whose poems about “rainy sidewalks and “his dust of dreams,” would one
day touch the minds and hearts of thousands of readers.
Still further in
the book we find ourselves sitting in seats at Fenway Park in Boston,
Massachusetts. This is one of the most famous baseball parks in the world and
the oldest in the Major League. Here a child and her grandfather “sip clam
chowder / on a crisp fall night,” and then “cheer as a ball / takes off in
flight.”
In all, children
who look at this book will visit fourteen places in the United States, all of
which are unique and interesting in their own way. Poems written in a variety
of styles by Nikki Grimes, J. Patrick Lewis, Linda Sue Park and others are
accompanied by marvelous illustrations, and in the back of the book readers
will find further information about the Amazing Places featured in the book.
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