Can't Spell Poetry without Try- Reviewing 4 children's poetry books
1. Remember- Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo takes her famous poem "Remember" and, with the help of Michaela Goade, renders it into a children's picture book. The overall theme of this book is reflective of the philosophy of Cosmology which basically states that a human being in not an indvidual but rather one part of a larger being - the cosmos or the universe. This belief or ideology is throughout Harjo's poem but is really highlighted by the last lines few lines that read "You are the universe / the universe is you"
2. Bravo! Poems About Amazing Hispanics- Margarita Engle
Bravo! is a collection of short poems that aim to highlight and teach children about famous Hispanic people throughout the 18th and 19th century. Though Engle includes the geogprahical location of each person (Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba, etc.), it's important to note that Engle has specifically chose the word Hispanic to describe these iconic people. She explicitly states that some of these icons lived in places that were at the time owned by Spain and thus to call them Latinos or Chicanos would not be accurate, regardless of what somewhat from that region would be conisdered by today's metric. Engle chose famous hispanic people from authors, activists, artist, scientist, or even atheletes. It's quite clear that this has been done to demonstrate that hispanic people can achieve all the great things that any other race or culture can achieve. They come from all over and from all walks of life, have faced and overcome hardships, defeated odds against them, and risen above to the other side.
Engle has purposefully written this collection with Children as the audience in mind. The poems offer brief explanation of what each person is famous for and hinting a little bit of their assumed personality or voice. This book would be a great aid to learning about Hispanoamerica history. It should certainly be included during Hispanic Heritage month. This collection covers 18 different famous hispanic icons through history and although they each have different careers and stories there is a common throughline of Hispanic pride, peserverance and strength.
The language of this book is quite impressive. Engle writes in a way that understandable though at times conatins a slightly elevated vocabularly and tone. For that reason I believe this book might be more geared towards children age 9-13, or those who have the background knowledge of why its so important to understand that hispanic people faced prejudice despite existing as contributing member of society for a long time. While there are no table of contents or Index in this book, Engle has included biographical notes on each figure at the end of the collection.
Rafael Lopez's portraits of each historical figure works well with Engle's poems. The portraits are styled with objects and depictions that reflect their aura and life's work. The illustrations have a scrapbook like style with bold and vibrants colors- colors that are often associated with Hispanic culture.
3. One Last Word- Nikki Grimes
One Last Word is a tremendous collection of poems that aims to meld together a poet from modern day (Grimes) and the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. The spotlight is just as much on grimes is it as on the poets of that era. The Harlem Renaissance was an extremely important time period for art in general, but specifically for Black Americans. It was a time period that showed a people who were so horribly prejudiced and treated were just as thoughtful, insightful and creative as anyone else. They excercised their new found automny and agency through their artwork and finally had a voice. The Harlem Renaissance and its artists sparked ideas, art, and words that are still referenced and inspire art today. It's precisely why Grimes' purpose to melt together her poetry with Harlem Renaissance poetry is so apt and impactful. In this collection, Grimes alternates her poetry with a poet from the Harlem Renaissance, continuing a throughline of a young girl trying to make sense of world that sometimes feels like hasn't changed that much at all by looking at the art and words of those who feel so far away and yet so close at the same time.
The audience is clearly children. Perhaps in the 9-13 age range. Though, generally speaking, the words aren't that hard to understand, it's the themes and what they invoke or infer that make it more geared towards a child with higher maturity than that of, say, a kindgergardener. This collection of poems would also be a great resource for Black History Month as it incorparates an important era of black history. There is, of course, the aspect of social and political awareness of the reality of what it means to be black in America.
Grimes is the main poet in this collection but includes poets such as, Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Clara Ann Thompson. For all of her poems throughout the collection, Grimes uses the poetry style known as the Golden Shovel. That is the last word of each line in the poem can be read horizontally as a separate poem that synathizes or reflects the original poem in a way. The collection has a table of contents, biographies, and an Index. The illustrations throughout the book are from famous african american artists, illustrators, and authors. The modge podge of art styles and perspectives are wonderfully reflective of the idealogy that every one has a different lens on how they view the world but ultimately we can use everyone's perspective to tell a story or demonstrate how a group of people feel or should be represented.
4. Wet Cement- Bob Raczka
Wet Cement is a fantasically imaginative exploration of how creative and fun poetry can be. Raczka uses this collection of over 20 poems to demonstrate that sometimes the purpose of poetry can purely be to play around with words, sounds, and letters and see how and what you can create with them. The technical term for these poems is Calligram. Poems that use words to create an image that directly reflects the words themselves. It's a great example that, despite some viewing poetry as an artform with many rules, there really are no rules when it comes to creating art. Raczka explicitly states in his introduction that he views these types of poems as "word paintings" and hopes that this collection inspires his audience to get creative.
Though Raczka's audience is clearly children and specifically children learning about poetry, I found this collection to be really entertaining and clever. I found myself breathing out of my nose a lot saying, "Oh, cute." while reading this collection. For that reason I think the audience of this book could really be anyone, children, teens, adults. All that to say the subject matter and the content of the poems are really simple and basic things like a hanger, hopscotch or dominoes to name a few. However, this lends itself well to the childlike tone that Raczka employs in these poems. Bob Raczka is the only poet attached to this collection, but each poem is different from the other. Each looks different and is about something different as well. However they are all calligrams as this is the point of the collection. Wet Cement does have a table of contents that organizes all the poems and has very aptly made the poem "Take-Off" the first poem and the poem "Poetry" the last. The poems are illustrations in and of themselves, but other thant that there are no other drawn illustrations that accompany the poems. I particularly liked that the poems "Dipper" and "Firefly" are inverted, meaning the pages are black and the letters are white, to reflect the concept that the Big Dipper and Fireflies are things you see at night when it is dark.
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