MORE POCKET POEMS

Out in time for National Poetry Month—and specifically April 30th, which is Poem In Your Pocket Day—this follow-up to 2004’s Pocket Poems (illustrated by Marilyn Hafner) offers nearly 50 more short verses and excerpts paired to bright cartoon scenes of, mostly, children at play in various settings. The underlying theme is seasonal, with topics that range from Emily Dickinson’s “Dear March, come in!” and Paul B. Janeczko’s “August Ice Cream Poem” (“Lick / quick”) to a Halloween “Skeleton Parade” from Jack Prelutsky and Jorge Torres’s bilingual “José in Winter: El Invierno.” Though weighted toward more recent work (with four contributions by Katz), a clip from the Navajo Night Chant, part of the witches’ incantation from Macbeth and several traditional jump-rope or other rhymes read freshly enough to fit in. Plenty of good choices here for memorizing, for reading aloud or just…reading. Afterword on the importance of poetry to language development. (Poetry. 7-10)