Picture book read-alongs are ostensibly geared toward the preschool set, but Harlem will be most resonant for teens and adults, though, if we're lucky, it will encourage children to want to know who Langston and Lady Day were. Walter Dean Myers's Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Award-winning poem, a tribute to the cultural center that is Harlem, is told in the meter of the streets and stoops. Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis are deep and smooth, reverent and playful as they narrate back and forth. The story experience is accompanied by Christopher Myers's beautiful and complex collage illustrations and background music, which moves from African drums to a church organ to a lone clarinet. This book is family listening sure to inspire discussion of Myers's ultimately hopeful vision.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2000
Duration: 15 mins
Publisher: Spoken Arts
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Narrators John Lithgow and Kate Mulgrew alternately share poems and songs created by Fred Rogers for his long-standing television show. Rogers's messages affirm children and give voice to the myriad feelings, good and bad, that all people feel from time to time. Wonder, joy, questions, exploration, outsides and insides, a new baby, one-of-a-kindness, needs emotional and material are examples of the breadth of Rogers's words. Lithgow's voice has its own richness, reminiscent of Rogers's own. His tone is firm and straightforward. When his voice expresses the anger of a poem, for example, he soon becomes calm as the anger fades. Kate Mulgrew is equally genuine and sets a pace for children's consideration of each message.
(Poetry. 3-8)Pub Date: March 19, 2019
Duration: 1 hr, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781683691808
Publisher: Random House Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Updike’s 12 poems celebrate the changing seasons with images that might catch a child’s eye. His verses, some of which are very lovely, focus on changes in the natural world (from snow to mud to crocuses) and on celebrations that accompany these changes (Christmas, Valentine's, Fourth of July). Each verse ends with a sound image that connects to the month’s poem (such as the sound of fireworks or baseball heard on TV). Updike’s presentation is earnest. While he sometimes overemphasizes line breaks in his poems, he has a kind voice and reads carefully, allowing time for children to enjoy the lovely gem-like illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman.
Ages 4-6Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2004
Duration: 13 mins
Publisher: Live Oak Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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