Poetry

Blog Post #8

Poetry

According to our book, Literature and the Child, “Poetry deals with the essence of life and its experiences.” Poems are heard and felt. Poems make you feel. In the first book of poetry, I am Loved, a poetry collection written by Nikki Giovanni and illustrated by Ashley Bryan, the poems are all about being loved and loving others in return. It is a sweet poetry book for children. The author has one poem that is especially sweet called The Quilt. The Quilt is about an old tablecloth that used to have a job of covering the table but now is old and frayed. The tablecloth asks to be made into a quilt so that it may keep a child warm or an elderly person comforted. Another poem in this anthology is a poem about the authors love for her ancestors. There is even a mirror amongst the brightly colored drawings. Love is pronounced throughout the book.

The illustrations in the book compliment the poems. The poem about quilts has art that is striped and pieced together like a quilt. The colors are vibrant pinks, purples, blues and greens. Every part of the page is covered in color and design. Even the end pages of the book are decorated with stripes of many colors.

The second poetry book I chose is a picture book poetry book, A Giraffe and a Half by Shel Silverstein. Shel Silverstein has a way of rhyming words that equals silly poems that make kids laugh. His illustrations go along perfectly with the words of the poem. His illustrations look like black pencil drawings. A child can follow along with the poem by looking at the drawings. This poem is about a giraffe and a boy. The boy keeps adding silly things to the giraffe making a silly poem. The giraffe increases by half when he puts on a hat with a rat, a rose on his nose and a bee on his knee. Shel Silverstein goes on from there to make a silly poem about a boy and his giraffe even sillier.