This book would be a good fit for intermediate grades or for a read aloud. This book is a series of poems from several different authors. They vary from poems about school, to rocks, to baseball but all feel like they would be relatable to children. This book would be great for units on poetry or descriptive writing. ( )

This book was a collection of poems. There were some really cute poems that was all about children and school and rocks and trees, desks, every day things children would know about. I think this is a perfect little book of poems for children to read because they can relate to children. This would definitely be a book I would choose for children who are learning poetry. I really don't know what I would extend this book with because it has so many poems but if I had to pick one to extend I would "In my Desk" and I would extend it by saying what type of history each thing in his desk told. I would also extend it by talking about the child's note from Mary Ellen White because it did not elaborate.

This is such an interesting way for children to look at poetry. The designs Heard makes to go along with each poem captures students attention and brings the poems to life. She brings in many different authors into one book. This is a great mini-anthology to have in the classroom. ( )

I liked reading this book of poems for many reasons. For example, each poem was written by a different author. This made the book more interesting and provided many different versions of poems. I also liked how the words on each page weren’t necessarily written in “standard” poem form. For example, in one of the poems the words looked as if they were actually falling down the page. The letters were vertical and somewhat slanted. In another poem, the words were sideways on the page as if they were flipped. This makes the poem different and exciting to read. Another reason I enjoyed reading this book because students can relate to the objects mentioned, such as; pencils, a baseballs, and rocks. The poem also created imagery. One of the statements was, “I like to hold in my hand a baseball, a shell, a fistful of sand…” I like how the author stated that he held a fistful of sand instead of just holding sand. Lastly, the poems were written in a creative and fun way. The title of one of the poems was, Things to do if you are a pencil. The title of this was actually in the shape of a pencil. I thought this was a good idea. ( )

I liked this book of poetry for many reasons. The first reason being the way the editor used different layout designs for each poem, yet she connected the layout to the information in each poem. For the poem, Things to do if you are a Pencil by Elaine Magliaro, Georgia Heard wrote the title sideways on the page, made the eraser the top of the words and the tip the bottom, and made the pencil look like it wrote the authors name on the page. I found that to be really interesting and creative. Another reason I enjoyed this book is that each poem is different, the styles are different, the themes are different, even the vocabulary is different. For instance, Booktime by Avis Harley has one-word lines and the vocabulary is stating different objects you find in your home. Whereas, Words in my Pillow by Naomi Shihab Nye, uses descriptive words of foods eaten using complete sentences, along with one-word sentences. The main theme of the book is there not really being a theme at all, it is to show all the different forms of poetry that can be written no matter how short or long they are. The main theme is also transforming everyday things into something beautiful like a poem. ( )