Values of Poetry for Children

1. Values of Poetry for Children • Pure enjoyment • knowledge of world • appropriate language and expand vocabulary • identify with people and situations

2. Familiar moods and feelings • Insights into themselves and others • Sensitivity to universal needs and feelings

3. NCTE Outstanding Poets • 1977 David McCord • 1978 Aileen Fisher • 1979 Karla Kuskin • 1980 Myra Cohn Livingston • 1981 Eve Merriam • 1982 John Ciardi • 1985 Lillian Moore

4. 1988 Arnold Adoff • 1991 Valerie Worth • 1994 Barbara Esbensen • 1997 Eloise Greenfield • 2000

5. Newbery Winners • 1982 Nancy Willard’s A Visit to William Blake’s Inn • 1989 Sid Fleisman’s A Joyful Noise

6. New York Times Best Seller List • 1981 Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic; Best Seller List 182 weeks • 1982 T.S. Elliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats; CATS -- musical • 3 million copies sold Where the Sidewalks Ends

7. Poems Children Prefer • Contemporary poems • Poems about familiar & enjoyable experiences • Story poems • Humor • Poems with rhythm & rhyme

8. Criteria for Selecting Poetry • Exciting meters & rhythms • Sound & word play • Strong imagery • Simple stories, lots of action

9. Not condescending • Children required to interpret and extend • Delightful, happy, funny • Good enough to be read repeatedly

10. Elements of Poetry • Rhythm • Rhyme and other Sound Patterns • alliteration • assonance • onomatopoeia

11. Repetition • Imagery • metaphors • similes • personification • hyperbole • Shape

12. Forms of Poetry • Lyric • Narrative • Ballads • Limericks • Concrete Poems • Haiku

13. Poems and Poets • Nursery Rhymes • Nature Poems • Characters, Situations, and Locations • Moods and Feelings • Animals • Witches and Ghosts

14. Edward Lear • Lewis Carroll • Laura E. Richards • Shel Silverstein • Jack Prelutsky • William Jay Smith • John Ciardi

15. Robert Frost • Aileen Fisher • Byrd Baylor • Paul Fleischman • Myra Cohn Livingston • Valerie Worth • David McCord

16. Langston Hughes • Cynthia Rylant