Finish National Poetry Month with a Book of Poems

In the first grade, I read Jack Prelutsky’s A Pizza the Size of the Sun. It changed the way I looked at words and at reading. If I could read one page of poetry, I could read two. I came to love reading first by loving poetry.

In my six-year-old mind, the rhymes were funny, the stories they told made absolutely no sense, and I wanted more of them. In these kinds of stories, pizzas could be as large as the sun. You could fall UP instead of down in Shel Silverstein’s book of poetry, Falling Up. What did I learn as a six-year-old reading poetry? The rules of the universe didn’t apply in poems.

Much later I learned that poems did reflect the real world, sometimes in flowery Shakespearean sonnets, and other times in quick stanzas of reality as in William Carlos Williams’ poems, i.e. “This Is Just To Say.”

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

We introduce words and language to children in rhymes. All of Mother Goose’s nursery rhymes are poetry. The children’s books that stick in our brains long past our childhood—they all rhyme! Madeline, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, Green Eggs and Ham, and the list continues.

So I encourage those among you who may not enjoy reading poetry for yourself to pick up a poem and read it out loud to your child this last week of National Poetry Month. I promise, if the poem is funny, if there are accompanying illustrations, then anything is possible! You may end up reading two or three.

As Shel Silverstein says in his poem “Listen to the Mustn’ts” from Where the Sidewalk Ends:

Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
      Listen to the DON'TS
      Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WONT'S
      Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me-
      Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.

Other Great Books of Poetry for Children:

The Maine Coon’s Haiku by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Lee White

A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by Tasha Tudor

Daniel Finds a Poem by Micha Archer

A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children by Caroline Kennedy, Paintings by Jon J Muth

Winter Bees and Other Poems of the Cold by Joyce Sidman & Rick Allen

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

When Green Becomes Tomatoes by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Julie Morstad

What Are You Glad About? What Are You Mad About? by Judith Viorst

Little Poems for Tiny Ears Poems by Lin Oliver, illustrated by Tomie dePaola 

When Green Becomes Tomatoes by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Julie Morstad

April is National Poetry Month, and Julie Fogliano’s When Green Becomes Tomatoes: Poems for All Seasons, with pictures by Julie Morstad, is a book of poems that makes you stop and read each one twice. They are joyful, childlike, and reflect the agonizing wait for sunshine to appear after a long winter.

Each poem is marked with a date. For instance, the poem for April 3 is an accurate depiction of a gray day after heavy rain.

april 3

today

the sky was too busy sulking to rain

and the sun was exhausted from trying

and everyone

it seemed

had decided

to wear their sadness

on the outside

and even the birds

and all their singing

sounded brokenhearted

inside of all that gray.

When Green Becomes Tomatoes starts and ends with the same poem on March 20 in the collection of poems categorized as “Spring.” Spring showers and daffodils gives way to “Summer,” a collection of poems focused on swimming in cool water, fireflies, and tomatoes on the vine. “Fall” is filled with leaves falling, pumpkins, and the first hints of winter. "Winter" arrives in a blanket of white with cozy poems, only to turn into spring again.

Morstad’s illustrations are so gorgeous that they would not look out of place framed on a wall. In a style that is similar to Gyo Fujikawa and Edward Gorey, Morstad’s illustrations are poetry themselves and bring Fogliano’s poems and the seasons to life.

Enjoy National Poetry Month by selecting a poem to read from When Green Becomes Tomatoes, where there is a poem for every season.

This review originally appeared in The Clarion Ledger.