A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing and Shout - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0763606634 ISBN 13: 9780763606633

Publisher: Candlewick, 2009

Synopsis

Turn up the sound! An award-winning duo returns with a playfully enticing ode to the pleasures of reading poetry aloud.

Whether rhyming, tongue-tying, or defying structure, here are more than three dozen poems that simply beg to be read aloud. The creators of A Poke in the I and A Kick in the Head complete a triplet with this collection of lively rhymes and tricky tongue twisters, poems for more than one voice, bilingual poems — and poems that may just inspire kids to memorize them. Paul B. Janeczko offers a range of gems, from classic Shakespeare and Lear to anonymous rhymes to contemporary riffs on everything under the sun, while Chris Raschka counterpoints with the vibrant accents of his wittily detailed artwork.

About this title

About the Author:

Paul B. Janeczko (1945–2019) was a poet and teacher who edited numerous award-winning poetry anthologies for young people, including A Poke in the I, A Kick in the Head, A Foot in the Mouth, and The Death of the Hat, all of which were illustrated by Chris Raschka; Firefly July, illustrated by Melissa Sweet; and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems, illustrated by Richard Jones. He also wrote Worlds Afire; Requiem: Poems of the Terezín Ghetto; Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing; Double Cross: Deception Techniques in War; The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from Invisible Ink to CIA Moles, a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults; and Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis.

Chris Raschka is a Caldecott Award-winning illustrator of more than twenty books for children, including I Pledge Allegiance, A Child's Christmas In Wales, and The Grasshopper's Song. He lives in New York City.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* The collaborators’ third illustrated poetry anthology, following A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems (2001) and A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms (2005), presents poems that beg to be read aloud. The universally strong poems, expertly tuned to both the anthology’s theme and its young audience, include classic and contemporary selections by well-known poets, from Lewis Carroll to Janet S. Wong. Loose categories for one, two, three, and more voices suggest ways to share the poems, and there are also bilingual poems, limericks, tongue twisters, and nonsense verses. Working in paint and brightly patterned cut paper, Raschka interprets the words with exuberance and sly wit, combining atmospheric, expressionistic details with representational figures that will draw young readers back to the poems’ subjects and themes. In Rebecca Kai Dotlich’s “Where Lizzie Lived: A Haunted Tale,” for example, an undulating swirl of gray ends with a woman’s face and deliciously amplifies the shivery lines: “Rotted floors / grumble slightly as we’re walking. / Do you hear Miss Lizzie talking?” Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing,” bordered in beautiful, joyful images, closes this superbly noisy celebration of language that’s sure to convert even the most reluctant poetry readers. Grades 4-7. --Gillian Engberg

About this edition

• Publisher: Candlewick
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0763606634
• ISBN 13: 9780763606633
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 64
• Illustrator: Raschka Chris