Poetry

Roses are red, violets are blue, poetry is sweet and you should read a lot too!

When it comes to poetry, some people have a difficult time understanding it and getting the real meaning of it. But to others, poetry has a musical quality that appeals to their emotions.

For children, they can share feelings, experiences, and visions when they read poetry (or if their teacher reads it to them). Through poetry, children can discover the power of words, a power that poets can release. There are many values to reading poetry, some of which you can’t find in other genres of books.

• Poetry provides enjoyment

• Poetry provides children with knowledge about concepts in the world around them

• Precise and varied vocabulary play such an important role in poetic expression, it encourages children to appreciate language to expand their vocabularies

• Poetry helps children identify with people and situations

• Poetry grants children insights into themselves and others, developing their sensitivity to universal needs and feelings

Through poems written by other children as well as other adults, children discover that others have feelings similar to the feelings expressed in their poems.

To evaluate poetry books, educators need to look for the following criteria:

1. Poems that are lively, with exciting meters and rhythms, are most likely to appeal to young children.
2. Poems for young children should emphasize the sounds of language and encourage wordplay.
3. Sharply cut visual images and fresh, novel uses of words allow children to expand their imaginations and see or hear the worlds in a new way.
4. Poems for young children should tell simple stories and introduce stirring scenes of action.
5. The poems selected should not have been written down to children’s supposed level.
6. The most effective poems allow children to interpret, to feel, and to put themselves into the poems. They encourage children to extend comparisons, images, and findings.
7. The subjects should delight children, say something to them, enhance their egos, strike happy recollections, tickle their funny bones, or encourage them to explore.
8. Poems should be good enough to stand up under repeated readings.

Out of the Dust by: Karen Hesse. This book is great to teach about the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and also have the story in poems.This book is fantastic to be read over and over, the reader can learn something new each time they read it.

Books posted so far on this type of literature:

1. Out and About: A First Book of Poems by: Shirley Hughes

2. Firefly July: A Year of Very Short Poems selected by : Paul B. Janecczko & Illustrated by: Melissa Sweet

3. Sweethearts of Rhythm by: Marilyn Nelson & Illustrated by: Jerry Pinkney