This was a really witty little poetry book. I read just a few selections, but it has all the possible situations in a school. The poems range from the nurses office to the playground, and all the way to the school dance. I think that it would be a good book to read to students when they return from recess and as they are cooling down and few poems could be very calming for them. ( )

Poems from Homeroom examines life from a teenage perspective. Each poem is accompanied (at the back of the book) by commentary from the author and suggestions as to how aspiring writers could use these poems as models for their own writing. ( )

Poems from Homeroom : A Writer's Place to Start, by Kathi Appelt, is a charming group of mainly free verse poems that take any reader who went through the high school years in the United States back again to the days of pimples, passing notes, and proms. Immortalized in the book's poems are such sorts as the football jock, the grocery store stockboy, the driving test applicant, and the school baton twirler. A standout among the 26 poems presented is "The Twirling Queen of Dogwood, Texas." The poem evocatively lays out the evolution of a baton twirler from her earliest inklings towards the activity to her graduation and beyond (her portrait on velvet comes to hang in the city hall). A disturbing low note is also on hand in the poem "Dumpling" about a girl who, after being groped by her father, can't scrub enough to "get that old gasoline smell to go away." At the end of the section of 26 poems, the author lays out her rationale for writing each of them, and some of it is a little convoluted. Helpful is her describing what type of poem each is, and then the affair turns into a type of well-rounded writing clinic for those seeking additional explanation. At book's end is a two-page list of books on writing poetry that nicely concludes things for the reader who enjoyed what came beforehand. This book would come in handy for any high school English class analyzing different types of poems. ( )