POETRY SPEAKS TO CHILDREN

This is jolly and good, a fine thing in an anthology. It serves as an excellent introduction to a whole lot of poetry, from Shakespeare to Nikki Giovanni, from Kipling to Naomi Shihab Nye. The poems are short and long, rhymed and not, famous and little-known. Every single one of them is appealing. There’s all of “Casey at the Bat” and “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod”; there are poems about farting and about underwear; there’s Billy Collins’s existential musing on turning ten and Maxine Kumin’s poem about a sneeze. The accompanying CD is a wonder: Langston Hughes introducing his own “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and Tolkien himself reading one of Frodo’s songs. Joy Harjo near-chants her “Eagle Poem,” and Poetry Alive! performs a few selections with a bit of musical accompaniment. The illustrations are earnest and cheerful, although they suffer a bit from being by several hands: There isn’t one style or focus. Sure to please teachers, parents and children who might not yet know how much they need poetry, and how much they will love it. (Poetry. 7-12)