Children's Poetry Review

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Title: The Dragons Are Singing Tonight
Author: Jack Prelutsky
Illustrator: Peter Sis
Genre:Poetry, Fables, and Folktales
Publisher: HarperCollins
Copyright Date: 1993
Pages: 40

Summary: This book is a combination of 17 poems about dragons. Dragons that are big, small, gentle, and ferocious. The poems encourage your imagination while using rhyme and rhythm, and wonderful words that will challenge the reader. The illustrations are absolutely amazing and hypnotize the reader with their beauty.

Educational Purpose: I would have students create their own poems with a certain kind of animal. For example dog, and the different types of dogs, and which one is their favorite dog. You could do this with cats, horses, birds, and fish.

Grade Level: (Fourth to Sixth Grade) This book challenges the reader with more complex vocabulary words. No Lexile Available.

Ratings:

					Comments
Plot	Excellent plot that is clever and has many surprising twists.	Good plot that has some surprises.	This is an okay plot that is kinda interesting.	Loose plot with many holes, and fails to grab the reader’s attention.	Lots of rhythm and rhyme, and surprising words.
Character	Excellent characterization. The characters are complex and provide a strong emotional impact on the reader.	The characters are believable and the reader can relate to them, and feel an emotional tie to the characters.	The characters are lacking but likable. There is some emotional attachment to the characters.	The characters are poorly described, and leave the reader feeling detached from the book.	The dragons are so enchanting that after reading you will find yourself believing in dragons.
Illustration	Excellent illustrations. Very detailed, creative, and connected to the book.	Illustrations were good and showed something important about the book.	The illustrations were okay, they were not very creative.	There was no illustrations, or they were not interesting.	The pictures are charming and imaginative.
Recommendation	Excellent book that I highly recommend having in your classroom or library. This book will captivate, enchant, fascinate, and basically make you obsess about it.	Good book that I recommend having in your classroom or library. The book was interesting and kept my interest and was overall very engaging.	This book was okay. I believe this would be a book to check out from the library if you're feeling bored.	This book was awful and I cannot recommend it for your classroom or library. This book will leave you wishing you could rewind time so you don’t read it.	Amazing book! I highly recommend this book because the poems are creative but the illustrations are even more magnificent.

Children's Poetry Review

Picture courtesy of Amazon.com

Title: Where the Sidewalk Ends
Author: Shel Silverstein
Illustrator: Shel Silverstien
Genre: Children's Poetry
Publisher: Harper Collins
Copyright Date: 2004
Pages: 309
Awards:  George C. Stone Center for Children's Books Recognition of Merit Award

Summary: This book is a collection of wacky and silly poems. The illustrations are simple but yet perfectly connected to the poem. You will laugh, you will cry, but most of all you will just enjoy reading each and every poem.  The opening poem is one of my favorites, and it completely welcomes you into the incredibly hilarious poems that will follow. 

Invitation

 If you are a dreamer, come in,

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, 

A hoper-er, a pray-er, a magical bean buyer...

If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. 

Come in!

Come in!

Educational Purpose: This book offers so much exposure to the fun of poetry. You could use this in your classroom with younger students to high school students. For younger students you would want to read an example and then have each of them create their own poem to one of his illustrations, or you could have your students create their own drawing to one of his poems. You could also print out the poems and have students circle the words that rhyme, so that they can be familiar with elements of poetry.

Grade Level: 3rd- 5th. This book truly be used for all age groups. The poems are simple and the text is easy to read. Lexile not available. 

Ratings:

					Comments
Plot	Excellent plot that is clever and has many surprising twists.	Good plot that has some surprises.	This is an okay plot that is kinda interesting.	Loose plot with many holes, and fails to grab the reader’s attention.	The poems are quirky and clever and have many different topics.
Character	Excellent characterization. The characters are complex and provide a strong emotional impact on the reader.	The characters are believable and the reader can relate to them, and feel an emotional tie to the characters.	The characters are lacking but likable. There is some emotional attachment to the characters.	The characters are poorly described, and leave the reader feeling detached from the book.	The characters will make you laugh, smile, and some will even make you cry.
Illustration	Excellent illustrations. Very detailed, creative, and connected to the book.	Illustrations were good and showed something important about the book.	The illustrations were okay, they were not very creative.	There was no illustrations, or they were not interesting.	The illustrations are simple and share some insight about the poems.
Recommendation	Excellent book that I highly recommend having in your classroom or library. This book will captivate, enchant, fascinate, and basically make you obsess about it.	Good book that I recommend having in your classroom or library. The book was interesting and kept my interest and was overall very engaging.	This book was okay. I believe this would be a book to check out from the library if you're feeling bored.	This book was awful and I cannot recommend it for your classroom or library. This book will leave you wishing you could rewind time so you don’t read it.	I would recommend this book, especially because this is a great book to get students excited about poetry.