The universal appeal of poetry

REVIEWS BY ALICE CARY

Here are four great ways to celebrate National Poetry Month with young readers—new collections that are excellent for both home and classroom. A standout is This Is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness. Poet Joyce Sidman has invented an imaginary class of sixth-graders who write "sorry poems" as part of a poetry unit. The famous poem that inspired this project is "This Is Just to Say," in which William Carlos Williams apologizes to his wife for eating the plums she left in the refrigerator. ("Forgive me / they were delicious / so sweet / and so cold.")

The concept for Sidman's book is original and entertaining, using a fictional classroom to bring a group of poems and their elementary school authors to life. There are verses about dodge ball mishaps, stolen doughnuts, a fashion faux pas, broken windows, crushes and spelling bees. There is humor, sadness and drama as people respond to each poem. Lively mixed-media illustrations by Pamela Zagarenski add to the fun. This is a fabulous book to show students the many forms that poetry can take and to inspire them to write their own "sorry" poems.


Planetary matters

A wonderful book for elementary students learning about space and astronomy is Douglas Florian's Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings. Florian is a master at creating collections of his own poetry and paintings, and his latest offering is chock-full of facts (the sun is "Ninety-three million miles from Earth. / Nearly a million miles in girth."), but it's also full of fun. A poem about a galaxy is shaped in a spiral and explains just what a galaxy is. There are poems about each planet, including lines like "Pluto was a planet. / Pluto was admired. / Pluto was a planet. / Till one day it got fired."

A concluding "galactic glossary" gives additional information about the topics covered in each poem. The artwork is rich and luminous, with deep blues and earthy reds, yellows and oranges. Some pages have holes so readers can see through to the next page, much like gazing through a telescope at the universe.


Fun and games

Jack Prelutsky is one of the kings of children's poetry, and he has teamed up with Caldecott Medal winner Chris Raschka to create what is no doubt a winning book: Good Sports: Rhymes about Running, Jumping, Throwing, and More. Prelutsky, widely known for his enormously accessible and humorous poetry, won the inaugural Children's Poet Laureate award, a title bestowed last fall by the Poetry Foundation.

This new volume includes short, unnamed poems about sports, from baseball and soccer to Frisbee and karate. Winning, losing, scoring, missing—it's all here. Everyone will giggle at verses like "I had to slide into the plate, / It was my only chance. / Though if I hadn't slid, then I / Would not have lost my pants." Raschka's lighthearted watercolor and ink illustrations add to the enjoyment, showing a wide-eyed player who has just lost his (or her) pants, and another player who has just been bonked on the head with a softball—which "isn't soft!" the poem concludes.


A biography in verse

Finally, teen readers can dig into Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath by Stephanie Hemphill. What better way to learn about the tragic, prize-winning poet than through verse? This series of short poems discusses incidents in the poet's life, from her birth in Boston in 1932 to her suicide in London in 1963, and includes short biographical notes that offer the reader additional details. The poems are written from the imagined perspectives of family members, friends and other acquaintances.

Hemphill's depiction of Plath is lively and unique. In a note to readers, Hemphill calls her book "a work of fiction," explaining that she has "taken liberties imagining conversations and descriptions and interpreting the feelings of the real people speaking in these poems." Here's a poem written from the viewpoint of Plath's best friend in fifth grade: "She wizards her way / through woods and fences, / makes things happen. / Sylvia sees a door / where other people see a wall, / but where will it lead?" Your Own, Sylvia (the title is taken from the closing Plath used on letters to her mother) will mesmerize teenagers interested in poetry and one acclaimed poet's mercurial path through life.


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