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By Nina Schuyler, The Children’s Book Review
Published: June 12, 2012

It’s summertime with its big bowl of a blue sky. Outside becomes another room, with open fields and the whir and buzz of bugs and baseball, and the voice of the water and the touch of sand.

Day One of summer, my son asks, “Now what?” So we ride our bikes to the library and load our backpacks with books about summer. Here’s a list to fill up the baggy pockets of summertime.

Summer and the Outside World

Oceans: Making Waves! 

Created by Simon Basher, written by Dan Green and Dr. Frances Dipper

Oceans: Making Waves! created by Simon Basher and written by Dan Green and Dr. Frances Dipper (independent marine consultant) takes kids underwater to discover mountains taller than anything on dry land, and trenches deeper than Mount Everest is high. Green personifies the aspects of the ocean. Here’s the Tide talking: “I’m a bit of a lunatic! As the Moon passes overhead, the water in the ocean feels a tug toward it. That’s gravity. In fact the whole planet feels this force of attraction…” Filled with interesting facts that make you see the world of the ocean with new eyes (the giant kelp grows up to 20 inches (50 cm) per day!)

Ages 10-15 | Publisher: Kingfisher | March 27, 2012

The Secret World of Whales 

By Charles Siebert; illustrated by Molly Baker

You’ll learn in The Secret World of Whales by Charles Siebert, illustrated by Molly Baker that the human brain and the whale brain are surprisingly similar and the sperm whale has the largest brain on earth, weighing more than 19 pounds (8.6 kilograms). Siebert explores the history, legends stories and science of whales. By the end, as the author did, you’ll want to have your own face-to-face encounter with this amazing creature.

Ages 8-12 | Publisher: Chronicle Books | April 20, 2011

Citizen Scientists

By Loree Griffin Burns; photography by Ellen Harasimowicz

Summer means getting outside and Citizen Scientists by Loree Griffin Burns, photography by Ellen Harasimowicz shows you how to engage with the natural world in a scientific way.  You’ll discover how to capture and tag a Monarch butterfly without damaging its wings, and you’ll learn to distinguish be

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: April 25, 2012

Beautiful Dreamers

In celebration of National Poetry Month, we’ve hand-picked ten many-splendored new books. Children are born loving poetry from the moment they form their first babbling words to when they begin to tackle more complex rhythms and tongue twisters. As they acquire language and enjoy how it rolls off their tongues, they also gain an appreciation for the beauty of creative expression. Nothing quite tops that moment when they learn to recite their first nursery rhyme. So leave a poem in your child’s pocket and help him discover the appeal of modern poetry.

Every Thing On It

By Shel Silverstein

If you’re like most of us, you may have grown up with Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, or The Giving Tree on your childhood bookshelf. Master wordsmith and doodler Shel Silverstein invented laugh-out-loud silly rhymes for us to endlessly ponder. Every Thing On It has been posthumously published as a new collection of his irreverent poems and characters drawn with his trademark squiggly offhand style. It’s a great joy to share his nonsense poems with a new generation to puzzle over and love for years to come.

Ages 8-11 | Publisher: HarperCollins | September 20, 2011

A Stick Is An Excellent Thing

By Marilyn Singer; Illustrated by LeUyen Pham

What a winning combination Pham’s playful illustrations and Singer’s amusing verse make in this lovely poetry collection. Bouncing rhyme and pictures of active children at play ensure even the most poetry-adverse child will warm to its magical delights. As Singer’s light-handed verse concludes, “A stick is an excellent thing if you find the perfect one.” We’ve certainly found the perfect book of poetry in this one. For more on LeUyen Pham, check out our interview with her.

Ages 5-8 | Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | February 28, 2012

Water Sings Blue

By Kate Coombs; Illustrated by Meilo So

In her first book of poetry, Kate Coombs takes us on a voyage under the sea.

Thanks to the folks over at School Library Journal's Battle of the (Kids) Books, I discovered Kate Coombs' blog, Book Aunt, "Because OTHER people give you clothes and video games for your birthday. "  It looks like I'm a Book Aunt, too.

I’m posting my week-end book review a day early to clock in with Poetry Friday as a couple of days ago I received a review copy of Kate Coombs and Meilo So‘s new book Water Sings Blue, which Kate gave us a glimpse of back in January when her first copies arrived (and if you don’t know Kate’s blog, Book Aunt, it’s well worth a read).  It arrived just in time to squeeze it into our Water in Multicultural Children’s Books theme…

Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Dori at Dori Reads…

Kate Coombs, illustrated by Meilo So,
Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems
Chronicle Books, 2012.

Ages 4-11

The finely tuned observation in both the poetry and illustrations of Water Sings Blue draws young readers into that world of the shoreline where time just seems to disappear and exploration offers up endless possibilities for discovery.  Kate Coombs’ poems are satisfyingly memorable, with their cohesive patterns of meter and rhyme that, nevertheless, contain plenty of surprises – like, for example, the alliteration and internal rhyming at the end of “Sand’s Story”, in which mighty rocks have turned to sand:

Now we grind and we grumble,
humbled and grave,
at the touch of our breaker
and maker, the wave.

… Not to mention the witty pun on “breaker”: and the gentle wit of Coomb’s verse also lights the imagination throughout this collection.

Turning the pages, readers encounter a vast array of sea characters, starting in the air with the seagull; then listening to “What the Waves Say” before diving down to meet the creatures of the deep: like the shy octopus author (think ink…), or the beautiful but self-absorbed fish whose tail and fins act as brushes, and who concludes his/her soliloquy with the wonderfully evocative: “I’m a water artist. / You wouldn’t understand.”  As well as creatures like sharks and jellyfish, there are poems about fascinating, less well-known fish – “Oarfish”, “Gulper Eel” and “Nudibranch”: they could become a follow-up project by themselves!  There’s also a deep-sea shipwreck, and back on the sea shore, a gnarled “Old Driftwood” telling stories “to all the attentive / astonished twigs”, and a property agent hermit crab with a salesman’s patter.

Bringing all the poems together in a visual feast are Meilo So’s gorgeous watercolors.  As well as her depiction of jewel-colored corals and waves in every shade of blue imaginable, her illustrations are clearly also influenced by direct observation of the shoreline around her Shetland Isle home, from fishermen’s cottages to diving gannets.

Just like in real beachcombing, young readers will lose track of time as they pore over So’s seashores for

#19 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2011.

     

Hola! ¿Qué pasa?

The lovely and brilliant Kate Coombs, Ms. Book Aunt herself, is here to spice things up! I just learned she speaks fluent Spanish and comes from a very cool multiethnic family -- a blend of Caucasian, Korean, Filipino, and Samoan. I'd call that a pretty tasty mix, wouldn't you? Think about it: pancakes for breakfast, japchae and kimchi for lunch, pancit for dinner. Yum!

Today, Kate's sharing three poems inspired by her teaching experiences in a primarily Latino district near downtown Los Angeles. They are from an unpublished bilingual collection called Street of Songs, and will whet your appetite for pupusas and tamales. Hot stuff!


Pico-Union street scene

Kate: Street of Songs/Calle de Canciones is a group of poems about the life of a third grader named Lily Quiñonez who lives in L.A.'s Pico-Union neighborhood. My inspiration was teaching elementary school for five years in that part of L.A. -- actually Koreatown, but the local population, not the working population, is predominantly Latino.

Then I became a teacher for the school district's home/hospital program. I was invited to the children's homes for birthday parties while at the grade school, and I've spent a lot of time since in Latino homes as a teacher of seriously ill students -- cancer and post-surgery patients, among others. I've met so many terrific kids, and mischievous kids, you name it. I wanted other people to meet them, too! So I began writing about them, and I ended up with the Lily poems.


Forkable Blog/flickr

CORN
by Kate Coombs

Corn grows along the fence
of my godmother's house,
a row of green Aztec feathers.

Inside each ear,
yellow pyramids yearn
to step up to the sun.

© 2011 Kate Coombs. All rights reserved.



mattmadden123/flickr


JALAPENO
by Kate Coombs

Have you ever bitten
into a chili like a dragon's smile
and breathed out a red sun?

© 2011 Kate Coombs. All rights reserved.


smART Image Photography/flickr

Ay caramba! My mouth's on fire. Good thing Kate brought a poem to cool things down. Ahhhhhhh!

When I was in the UK this spring, I found a delightful poetry anthology called I Like This Poem: A collection of poems chosen by children for children in aid of The International Year of the Child.  The book was published in 1979 as a fundraiser and was unique insofar as the poems had been selected and recommended by children from ages 6-15.  The anthology is divided into age categories, so a parent or children themselves, can select the section appropriate to their age or the age of their child.  As to be expected, I had differing experiences reading the poems to my twelve year old son and my eight year old daughter.

One of the nice details in this anthology is the inclusion of a child’s comment on why s/he liked the particular poem.  I found with reading the poetry to my son — some of it difficult to grasp or opaque to him — that it helped to have another child’s comment on why the poem was liked or meaningful.  Indeed, it also helped me as a reader better experience the poem as well!  My son preferred funny poems, but I was struck by several comments by readers about how the ‘beauty’ in the poems moved them.

With my daughter, I had an entirely different reading experience.  My daughter responded best to poems that played with sounds. Midway through our readings, she got it into her head that she would like to act out the poems.  A particular favorite was “On the Ning Nang Nong” by Spike Milligan.  A playful-with-words kind of poem, it goes like this:

On the Ning Nang Nong

Where the Cows go Bong!

And the Monkeys all say Boo!

There’s a Nong Nang Ning

Where the trees go Ping!

And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo.

Watching my daughter happily ‘booing’ like a monkey and ‘bonging’ like a cow, I felt she was experiencing poetry at its most exuberant and celebratory best.

This week’s Poetry Friday host is Kate Coombs at Book Aunt.