A Child's Introduction to Poetry: Listen While You Learn About the Magic Words That Have Moved Mountains, Won Battles, and Made Us Laugh and Cry (A Child's Introduction Series) - Hardcover

Driscoll, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1579122825 ISBN 13: 9781579122829

Publisher: Workman Kids, 2003

Synopsis

Poetry can be fun-especially when we can read it, hear it, and discover its many delights with the help of cartoon character Professor Driscoll, delightful illustrations, and the poetry read aloud on CD.

This wide-ranging journey through the history and highlights of the world's poetry covers everything from epics and odes to nonsense verse and haikus, and is filled with examples of every style.

The multimedia package encourages children to listen, read, and learn-and opens the door to a lifetime of appreciation of a rich literary tradition.

It painlessly introduces kids (and parents, too) to the greatest poets in history, from Homer and Shakespeare to Robert Frost and Ogden Nash-and provides excellent examples of their work and commentary on what makes it so special. In short, this is a galloping tour through poetic history loaded with all of our most significant and beloved poems. In addition to charming illustrations on every lively page, A CHILD'S INTRODUCTION TO POETRY contains a full-length CD with wonderful renditions of the poems read by professional actors.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Driscoll is the author of A Child's Introduction to Poetry and A Child’s Introduction to the Night Sky (both Parent's Choice Award winners). He is currently a staff editor at the New York Daily News.

Meredith Hamilton graduated from Brown University and has an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Formerly an art director at Newsweek and Time, she illustrated the previous six books in the Child's Introduction series, among other books, and her work can be found in magazines and animations as well. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and three children.

Reviews

Grade 4-8-There are plenty of collections of children's poetry available, but none like this one. The first section discusses the different forms the genre takes: nursery rhyme, narrative verse, ballad, free verse, pastoral, etc. Driscoll offers a clear explanation of each type and defines any difficult, associated vocabulary. Commentary on each example and a note on where to find the recording on the accompanying CD is provided for each selection. The second section covers individual poets from Homer to Maya Angelou and offers at least one example or excerpt from each writer's work. The brief introductions to the forms and poets are lively and often amusing. Readers will find the varied layouts and warm cartoon watercolors inviting. On the CD, a professional actor reads the selections; the music or sound that precedes each one sets the mood. This is a great resource for teachers and homeschoolers, and a must for libraries. It has more diversity than Glorya Hale's An Illustrated Treasury of Read-Aloud Poems for Young People (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2003).
Donna Cardon, Provo City Library, UT
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gr. 4-6, younger for reading aloud. Playful and informative, this cheerful anthology introduces kids to the joy of all kinds of poetry (limerick, haiku, sonnet, free verse, and much more) with a quick overview of famous poets from Homer, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth to Robert Frost and Langston Hughes. There's too much packed on each page--the poem, facts about the poet and the form, line-and-watercolor cartoon illustrations, definitions of highlighted words, and asides on colored screens--and few contemporary poets are represented. But Driscoll lures readers by beginning with traditional nonsense verse and limericks, and then easing into the more technical forms, such as the villanelle and the pastoral. He gets away from the view of poetry as difficult and special, focusing on sharing the fun, especially the joyful sounds and rhythms of the words. Kids can hear the 64 poems read aloud on an accompanying CD; a "play track" symbol on the page informs kids when it's time to stop and listen. For teachers as well as family sharing. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Workman Kids
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1579122825
• ISBN 13: 9781579122829
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Hamilton Meredith
• Number of pages: 96