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Walking on Earth and Touching the Sky

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Bibliography: McLaughlin, Timothy P., and Joseph Marshall III. Walking on Earth and Touching the Sky: Poetry and Prose by Lakota Youth at Red Cloud Indian School . Ill. by S.D. Nelson. New York: Harry N Abrams, 2012. ISBN: 978-1419701795 Summary:  Walking on Earth and Touching the Sky is a sincere and moving collection of poetry and prose written by the Lakota youth at the Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. In short passages, the young writers explore their cultural heritage and the misery and resilience of Native people in modern times. A foreword by Joseph M. Marshall III (Sicangu Lakota) acknowledges the importance of listening to young voices, reminding us that no image of life is complete without the perspective of the young. The voices expressed in this book represent the legacy of the Lakota people, carried by children into the future. These children and teenagers share their experiences of life on the reservation, including a deep rev
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A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms

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Bibliography: Janeczko, Paul B. A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms . Ill. by Chris Raschka. Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-0763641320 Summary:  A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms is a fun and colorful primer introducing the rules of twenty-nine different styles of poetry. An introduction by the editor, Paul B. Janeczko, explains that rules make “the writing of a poem more challenging and exciting,” comparing them to the rules of games and sports. These limitations can inspire creativity, and Janeczko suggests that readers try their hands at mimicking the poets’ styles, bending the rules, forming poetry clubs, and giving poems as gifts. Each poetic form is introduced with one or two poems from a diverse cast of poets, along with Chris Raschka’s quirky illustrations. Raschka represents the poetic forms in small icons that appear above the names of the forms: a pair of birds for couplets, 5 and 7 and 5 flowers for the ha
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My Thoughts Are Clouds: Poems for Mindfulness

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Bibliography: Heard, Georgia. My Thoughts Are Clouds: Poems for Mindfulness . Ill. by Isabel Roxas. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2021. ISBN: 978-1250244680 Summary: Using the conventions of poetry, Georgia Heard introduces readers to the basics of mindfulness practice in her beautifully rendered collection My Thoughts Are Clouds: Poems for Mindfulness . Heard makes the case for mindfulness in her introductory note to readers and in poems that compare the mind to a monkey swinging from branch to branch. The following five sections introduce readers to breathing techniques ( Breathe in Breath Out ), accessible concepts for self-awareness ( Mindful Me ), poems to sharpen the senses ( Mindful World ), tools for relaxation and focus ( Meditation ), and poems to turn compassion outward to other people and all the creatures of the world ( Kindfulness ). Isabel Roxas’s whimsical and soothing blue and black illustrations combine with Heard’s poetry to create an accessible, helpful, and fun us
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Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold

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Bibliography: Sidman, Joyce. Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold. Ill. by Rick Allen. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. ISBN: 978-0547906508 Summary: In Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold , Joyce Sidman shares her wonder for the miraculous ways in which animals and plants survive and thrive in the winter. The migration of tundra swans, the hibernation of snakes, the molecular structure of snowflakes, the companionship of a mother moose and her offspring, the warmth-making huddles of bee colonies, the under-ice activity of beavers, the surprising hunting partnership of ravens and wolves, the burrowing of voles under snow, the hardening of deciduous trees, and more. Each beautifully crafted poem is paired with an informational sidebar which discloses incredible facts about these wonders of the natural world. Rick Allen’s amazing linoleum-printed illustrations match Sidman’s poems in their breathtaking beauty and texture. A glossary of scientific terms appears at the
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Poems to Learn by Heart

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Bibliography: Kennedy, Caroline. Poems to Learn by Heart . Ill. by Jon J. Muth. Los Angeles: Disney-Hyperion, 2013. ISBN: 978-1423108054 Summary: Poems to Learn By Heart is a diverse treasury of poems collected for readers to memorize and share. Caroline Kennedy, with the help of students from DreamYard Prep in the Bronx, has compiled an impressively broad assortment of poems ranging from complex and esoteric classics to accessible and familiar rhymes. The poems are arranged in sections by topics including poems about the self, family, friendship and love, fairies and other magical creatures, nonsense, school, sports and games, war, and nature, and the book concludes with a section entitled “Extra Credit” featuring advanced poems for memorization. Each section begins with an introduction to its theme, and Kennedy shares fascinating memorization techniques from ancient Greece and Rome, challenging the reader to push the limits of their recall and join in the tradition of bards who could
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One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance

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Bibliography:  Grimes, Nikki. One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance . New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. ISBN: 978-1681196022 Summary: In One Last Word , master poet Nikki Grimes transforms classic poetry of the Harlem Renaissance into new poems using a method called the “Golden Shovel.” By arranging the words of the source poem vertically in the right margin, they become the last words of each line of a new poem. The result is an empowering collection of classic works by Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Gwendolyn Bennett, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and more, paired with their ingeniously crafted new incarnations by Nikki Grimes. The poems, divided into three sections ( Emergency Measures , Calling Dreams , and To A Dark Girl ), explore resilience, beauty, self-love, hatred, hope, and Black joy. Each pair of poems is beautifully complemented by a richly colored illustration from a different artist (including Grimes herself). A preface provides background information on the Harlem Renaissa
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The Tree That Time Built

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Bibliography: Hoberman, Mary Ann and Linda Winston. The Tree That Time Built: A Celebration of Nature, Science, and Imagination (A Poetry Speaks Experience) . Ill. by Barbara Fortin. Naperville: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2009. ISBN: 978-1402225178 Summary:  The Tree That Time Built is an ingenious interdisciplinary anthology of nature poetry united by the common thread of Darwin’s discoveries of evolutionary principles. Classic and contemporary poets (such as Mary Oliver, Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Hans Christian Anderson, Rumi, Joyce Sidman, Carl Sandberg, Eve Merriam, and Joseph Bruchac, to name a few) offer meditations on the remarkable adaptations of living organisms and celebrate the wonders of the natural world. Nine thematic sections divide the poems into topics with poetic headings such as “Oh, Fields of Wonder,” “The Sea is Our Mother,” “ Think Like a Tree,” “Some Primal Termite,” “Everything That Lives Wants to Fly,” “I Am the Family Face,”
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