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 

Board Book Benefits

Interior from You Are My Baby: Farm

If you have a baby or toddler in your life, you already know the benefits of board books. You Are My Baby: Farm and Safari by Lorena Siminovich are my idea of the ideal board book. Because they were created as board books from their inception, the author-artist designed and executed them with very youngest children and very smallest hands in mind.

I got to hear renowned pediatrician and literacy advocate Dr. Perri Klass speak at the Bank Street College of Education a few years ago, and she talked about the importance of board books to the training of her pediatric residents. She said that they could learn everything they need to know by watching babies and toddlers handle board books. Do they pick up the board book by the spine? Can they turn the pages (motor skills)? Do they hold the book in its proper orientation (recognizing the images and viewing them right-side up)? Can they focus on what's in front of them?

Author-artist Siminovich presents each animal with one easily identifiable feature (a piglet's "curly, pink tail," a chick's "soft, yellow feathers") and the sound it makes ("Oink! Oink!"; "Peep! Peep!"). She essentially divides the book in two, with the baby animals having their own mini-book within the book. To help children match up the mother with her baby, Siminovich creates a background that serves as a puzzle would, allowing babies and toddlers to complete the picture. And at this age, the attachment to their own mothers is very strong, so the act of matching the cow with her calf, the horse with her foal, is in itself reassuring to babies and toddlers.

As you likely know, I love to extol the virtues of board books' endurance. Children can take them to bed, sleep on them, chew on them, drop them from a high chair, and Mom, Dad or Grandma can throw them in a back pack and keep them in the back seat for a long car ride.

It's so important that youngest children think of books as theirs, to have and to hold, to collect and to keep. And board books can handle their readers' rugged lifestyles.

Getting Word-Rich

As babies begin to put sounds together and make sense of their world, we can see the delight on their faces. They are communicating with the people they love. We answer in kind, with supportive sounds and loving hugs, in the sort of call-and-response that encourages further exploration of sounds and words. These are all instinctive. The Baby Goes Beep by Rebecca O’Connell, illustrated by Ken Wilson-Max, encourages these kinds of exchanges in playful, meaningful ways.

Last week, I attended the ALSC (Association of Library Service to Children) Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. Susan B. Neuman, a professor at the University of Michigan in Educational Studies specializing in early literacy development, talked about how key this kind of wordplay is to the development of early literacy. She emphasized the importance of talking to your child (even when you’re not in the best mood), singing and playing in helping your child to develop language skills. But—no surprise to all of us who love books—“books are the single most important avenue for learning new words.”

One thing that did surprise me was when Neuman said we should always respond to babies with the correct name for the things in their world. For instance, to take a common example, if the baby says “baa baa” for “bottle,” to respond with, “Would you like your bottle?” She encouraged us to always supply the baby with accurate vocabulary, so he or she can continue to expand his or her language in vocabulary-rich ways. Neuman said it takes, on average, 28 repetitions of a word for a child to learn it.

So, the message I took from her was: Have fun with language, sing, play, shout from the rafters—and give children the proper names for the things they seek.