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Poetry for the Seasons

I am a former elementary school teacher. I spent thirty-one years in the classroom. I also served as librarian at my school for three years. I know from my experience that one of the most popular subjects for poetry to share with elementary age children is poetry about the seasons. Teachers always asked to borrow seasonal poems about colored leaves, pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns, migrating birds, snow and winter weather, hibernating animals, sledding and ice skating, kite flying, flowers blooming, April showers, and the return of spring from the poetry file I kept in my second grade classroom—and later in my library. I was happy to oblige. A true enthusiast, I was always proselytizing with poetry.

So today, for Poetry Friday, I thought I would review three books of seasonal poetry. These are not hot-off-the-press books. Two were published in 2003 and one was published in 2002.



SEASONS: A BOOK OF POEMS
Written by Charlotte Zolotow
Illustrated by Erik Blegvad
Published by HarperCollins (2002)



SEASONS is An I Can Read Book. Its poetry is perfect for beginning readers. The vocabulary in this book will not intimidate children who are just learning to read independently. The poems are short—many are no more than six or eight lines long. The book contains poems that rhyme as well as poems that do not rhyme. While most of the poems speak about the weather and other signs of the four seasons—snow, falling leaves, summer winds, spring rain—there are poems that touch on other subjects as well—shadows, a pet cat, anger, watching an airplane flying across the nighttime sky. Erik Blegvad’s charming watercolor and ink illustrations—some of which conform to the shape of particular poems—are a perfect complement to Zolotow’s poetry for early readers.

Don’t let the small size of this book fool you. It is quite a substantial collection containing forty poems. SEASONS is a book of poetry that is perfect for use in kindergarten through the second grade.

Here are two examples of the simplicity you will find in the poems Zolotow wrote for this book:


Spring Song

The winter snow melts away
and the air is soft this sunny day
What does this gentle wind sing?
I know! I know!
Here comes Spring!


Spider Web

In the early summer morning
after the rain
small spider
your gray lace web
sparkles with diamonds
of
dew.

I can attest to the fact that many of the struggling readers I taught in second grade found the “I Can Read” poetry collections and anthologies published by HarperCollins

Black Beauty grows old (and Ginger dies!); Mattie never is nice to Wanda Petronski, and joins the other girls in egging her on about her “hundred dresses”; Lyra causes her best friend’s death; Anne Frank goes off to a concentration camp …. but all these books still left me with a feeling of hope -- about people and possibilities. Great books do this not with platitudes or PC messages or Walt Disney happy endings, but because of the way their (very real and believable) heroes and heroines react:

“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart,”

“Yes, she must have [really liked us],” said Mattie, and she blinked away the tears that came every time she thought of Wanda standing alone in the sunny spot in that sunny spot in the schoolyard, looking stolidly over at the group of laughing girls, after she had said, ‘Sure, a hundred of them – all lined up…”

“The first ghost to leave the world of the dead was Roger. He took a step forward, and turned to look back at Lyra, and laughed in surprise as he found himself turning into the night, the starlight, the air, and then he was gone, leaving behind such a vivid little burst of happiness that Will was reminded of the bubbles in a glass of champagne.”

“Hope is the thing with feathers –
that perches in the soul.” – Emily Dickinson