Poetry Speaks to Children (Book & CD) (Read & Hear)

A Pleasure to Read and Listen To
After reading it, I thought the book was a great selection. And then, I listened to the accompanying CD. Let me tell you, the CD makes the book a true gem of a find.

Overall, the book is filled with wonderful poems by a variety of poets, including J.R.R. Tolkien, Nikki Giovanni, Margaret Walker, Lewis Carroll, Agha Shahid Ali, W.B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Rita Dove, and X. J. Kennedy, among others. The poems range from the whimsical and the funny to the more serious.

While the book itself is wonderful, the CD truly does make this a fantastic read/listen. There is simply something wonderful about listening to Robert Frost read his "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" or listening to Nikki Giovanni tell us "Reasons Why I like Chocolate" and then listening to her read three of her other poetry selections included in this piece: "Trips", "Mommies", and "Knoxville, Tennessee". Equally fantastic is listening to Langston Hughes explain when and why he wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and then go on to read the poem.

Of the selections included on the CD, my absolute favorite was hearing J.R.R. Tolkien read "Frodo's Song in Bree", which was from The Fellowship of the Ring. Another favorite was listening to Joy Harjo read "Eagle Poem", a Native American song.

While the poetry selections included on the CD were wonderful, I found myself wishing that others, specifically Margaret Wise Brown's "The Secret Song" and versus from "The Elephant's Child" by Rudyard Kipling, had also been included on the CD.

Overall, however, this book is simply fantastic. And it's just as wonderful for an adult read as it is a children's read.

Great compilation!
Lively audio combined with classic and current poetry geared to please children and adults alike. A nice collection.

A wonderful "stand by" gift.
Anytime I order from Amazon, I throw one of these in my cart for a last minute new baby, birthday or teacher gift. It is a wonderfully diverse selection of poems, often read by the poets themselves. How cool is it to hear Robert Frost in a scratchy rendition of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"?

My 4th grader was thrilled when his class read a Janet Wong poem, and he could tell them about how she came to write it, (track 29). I was thrilled that I could then give his teacher a gift she could use in class -- they were all thrilled to hear the poem read by the poet. With 95 poems from 73 poets, the book is a great value, but add the cd with the poets themselves and it is, well, priceless.

Poetry speaks to children... and adults, too.
Elise Paschen (ed.), Poetry Speaks to Children (Sourcebooks Inc., 2005)

A collection of poems written to, or about, children with an accompanying fifty-track CD (most tracks are of the poems themselves, though a few are the poets talking about the inspiration for one piece or another). While a number of these fall into bona fide chestnut status, kids who are being exposed to poetry for the first time won't be aware of that, and that old black magic should work just fine on them. For older readers, it's fun to have a whole bunch of this sort of thing compiled into one volume (with its whimsical illustrations, sometimes almost as fun as the poems themselves). Recommended. ****

I love it, my wife loves it, my kids love it!
I am an amateur poet and love poetry so I'm a natural audience for this book and companion disc. My wife is not a lover of poetry and she loves this book. My eight year old daughter loves to read the poems and listen to them recited on the disc during road trips. My nineteen year old daughter LOVES this book - in fact she asked for it for Christmas last year and was delighted to recieve it!