21st March World Poetry Day

Poetry reaffirms our common humanity by revealing to us that individuals, everywhere in the world, share the same questions and feelings.

Poetry is the mainstay of oral tradition and, over centuries, can communicate the innermost values of diverse cultures. 

In celebrating World Poetry Day, March 21, UNESCO recognizes the unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind.

These are the first three paragraphs on the World Poetry Day website and these in themselves make it such a worthwhile day to commemorate. Unfortunately this is on a Saturday this year and we are not at school. We have had some great school celebrations on Poetry Day in the past. This year we have had a poetry book display in the library and I have encouraged the children in class time to borrow a poetry book by sharing a poem with each class. 

There are so many beautiful single poem poetry books. In fact it always surprises me how many books SCIS wants us to put in the poetry section of the library rather than in fiction, not that we always comply. There are also more and more very child friendly illustrated anthologies available. Below are some recent acquisitions, all anthologies that I love:

2nd June Michael Emberley (1960)

Happy birthday to Michael Emberley, an American illustrator who lives in Ireland with his Irish wife. He is the son of Ed Emberley, the sister of Rebecca Emberley and the husband of Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick. He is literally surrounded by other illustrators and no doubt influenced by them, but he has many books to his credit. He illustrates Mary Ann Hoberman's wonderful series, for two readers, You Read to Me, I'll Read to You. He is responsible for the illustrations in many of Robie H. Harris' books, my favourite being Happy Birth Day!, the perfect gift for a new baby, and it's sequel Hi New Baby! More recently he illustrated Barbara Bottner's Miss Brooks Loves Books. This book has won read-aloud awards and is particularly good for talking to children about reading tastes and how not every reader needs to like the same books. And as a teacher who is trying to convince children that books are terrific, I just love this picture from Michael's website of the exultant teacher and the child dressed as Shrek.

12th August Mary Ann Hoberman (1930)

Mary Ann Hoberman is the current American Children's Poetry Laureate. She loves reading, writing and sharing poetry and even at eighty her enthusiasm is contagious. Watch her on Youtube if you need convincing and hear her say she loves being the Pied Piper of poetry. I first met her through her book, the poem A House is a House for Me, but when an American teacher came to teach at the school I teach at now, she introduced us to Mary Ann's series of books, You Read to Me, I'll Read to You and we have had lots of fun with these books. Having watched the Youtube interview I am now going out to order her new book, All Kinds of Families, a poem that certainly extends the concept of family.