April is National Poetry Month and SMS Book Reviews is participating in a National Poetry Month Blog Tour. The Poetry Tour is being hosted at Savvy Verse & Wit, a great blog for poetry enthusiasts and book lovers.
If you’ve been following the tour you’ll recoginize the first book I’m reviewing but after you read that, check out my second review.
The Tighty Whitey Spider and More Wacky Animal Poems I Totally Made Up by Kenn Nesbitt
Stars: *****
May I just say, this is the BEST poetry book for kids I’ve EVER seen. No they didn’t pay me to say that, it’s true!
I’m not a big fan of poetry. I never have been. I don’t like short stories either so to me, most poetry is like even shorter stories. I’ve read (and reviewed) a few poetry books but I’m quite picky. This poetry book is full of animal poems.
Some are short and some are a bit longer but none are very long at all. They have all kinds of new words but they aren’t over the head too much. My niece is going to just love this book. You can hear the author read from some of his poems on the web. The poems you can hear online are marked and a few of the poems can be sung to popular tunes.
When I say the poems were funny, I’m not kidding. I was laughing out loud and I’m a an adult. I was telling the poems to everyone in my house whether they wanted to hear them or not. My brother enjoyed them too and wants a copy of the book (he’s 32.) The drawings that accompany the poems are line art and they are so cute. I just want to colour the whole book in! I don’t believe in drawing in books but it’s so hard not to. They look like colouring pages.
I highly recommend this book to ALL children, whether they normally like poetry or not.
You can read Kenn Nesbitt’s first book My Hippo Has the Hiccups online (or download it if you’d like) at http://www.zinio.com/kennNesbitt until the end of April!
Links of Interest: My Hippo has the Hiccups Online (as mentioned above), Poetry 4 Kids (website run by author),
Other Reviews: Jenn’s Bookshelves, Booking Mama,
Buy The Tighty Whitey Spider
Teahouse of the Almighty: Poems by Patricia Smith
Stars: ***
Coffee House Press 2006
National Poetry Series Winner
On a completely opposite end of the spectrum from the above poem book is this one. This one is for adults only and is full of longer, harder to comprehend poems. I won this book from the readathon a few years back. It seems like a good book but is not one I’d pick up on my own. The main reason I don’t like poetry is I find it hard to understand most of the time. However for someone who appreciates poetry more and has no trouble understanding most poetry, I’m sure they’d like this book.
I must caution that the book has strong language and sexual terms and acts in it as I know some people are turned off by that. On the plus side, the poems were creative. A few times, a news report was listed and a poem was created based on that. There’s even a poem crafted from a funny title of a spam email. There’s one long one titled 10 Ways to get Ray Charles and Ronald Reagan into the Same Poem.
Links of Interest: Patricia Smith,
Other Reviews: So Many Books,
Buy Teahouse of the Almighty
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Be sure to check Savvy Verse & Wit for the rest of the tour stops.
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