Here Is My Heart: Love Poems - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316197653 ISBN 13: 9780316197656

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1999

Synopsis

A varied collection of poems celebrates love, the most universal of emotions, and is enhanced with delicate watercolor paintings by the award-winning illustrator of Animal Crackers, a vellum jacket, and a red ribbon marker.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Smith has gathered often humorous, always amorous poems from the traditional to the new, from contributors with household names to the poetically omnipresent Anonymous. Among the stellar items are selections by Langston Hughes (``I could take the Harlem night/and wrap around you,/Take the neon lights and make a crown''), Kenneth Koch (``One day the Nouns were clustered in the streets./An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty''), Donald Hall (``Chipmunks jump, and/Greensnakes slither./Rather burst than/Not be with her''), and Robert Frost (``The rose is a rose,/And was always a rose,/But the theory now goes/That the apple's a rose,/And the pear is, and so's/The plum, I suppose''--playing on the old rhyme ``If Apples Were Pears,'' which is also included). Cock Robin is here, as are such characters as the Old Woman and the Marmalade Man; Jack Prelutsky and William Shakespeare also make appearances, and so does the former poet laureate himself: ``Now touch the air softly,/Swing gently the broom./I'll love you till windows/Are all of a room.'' Dyer contributes delicate, colored pencil drawings to the book, which is about the same size as a valentine. (index) (Poetry. 4-10) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Grade 2-5-Beginning with the translucent, plastic jacket and red fabric bookmark, this title is a keepsake to treasure. Here, love is not just valentines and roses, but also an ode to a canoe and a description of the pleasures of penny candy. The mostly one-page selections are by William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, and Jack Prelutsky, among others, and also include old rhymes and folk songs. What really brings these verses alive are the soft and appealing color-pencil illustrations and exquisite book design. There are drawings on each page, some only gentle depictions of a bird on a windowsill or a bowl of apples and pears, while others fill the page and allow the poem to become part of the art. Each illustration shows respect for the words, whether it's the bright-eyed vision of a youngster that accompanies Paul-Jean Toulet's "Black Girl" or the crying he-lizard and she-lizard in Federico Garcia Lorca's "Song." While many of these poems appear in other collections, the unifying theme and enchanting artwork will have young readers asking for this book over and over again.
Kristen Oravec, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Strongsville, OH
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0316197653
• ISBN 13: 9780316197656
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 47
• Editor: Smith William Jay, Dyer Jane
• Illustrator: Dyer Jane