Children's Lit-Spiration: The Dream Keeper

I promised more non-Seuss inspiration, so I['m delivering! Here's a little inspiration for those of you chasing your hopes and dreams, a message that might be especially relevant for our recent grads. By the way, if you're looking for a great children's poetry anthology, I highlight recommend The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury with poems selected by Jack Prelutsky, one of my personal favorite poets. We used Janet Schulman's The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury in our children's lit class and didn't focus a lot on poetry, but if the course is offered in the future, this would be my go-to text for examining poetry for children. Enjoy!

Bring me all of your dreams, 

You dreamers, 

Bring me all of you

Heart melodies

That I may wrap them

In a blue cloud-cloth

Away from the too-rough fingers 

Of the world.

--Langston Hughes, "The Dream Keeper"

Poems Poems Poems!

The Academy of American Poets has a wonderful website, Poets.org, that I often go to if I'm looking for a group of poems about a specific theme. It's super-easy to navigate:


So there you go - lots of poems about shoes, aliens, shark week. Also, as you can see, there's a "For Teens" page of poems. Under "Life and Leisure," there's a "childhood" page of poems, and under "Family and People," there are poem pages for "parenting," "daughters," and "sons."

Even BETTER, at least for our investigative purposes, is the Poetry Foundation's website, which has a similar categories function, which they call the "Poetry Tool."


(I made the blue circles)
As you can see, there is a whole section roped off for "Children's."

There are tons of great nooks and crannies on both of these organization's websites - for example, I stumbled upon "Ten Poems to Get You Through Science Class," which I would have loooved to use as a resource while I was growing up. If our lockers were any bigger, I probably would have also appreciated "Ten Poems to Read When You Get Stuffed in a Locker."

Anyway, have fun with these websites!

Valentine's Day Fun!

I went home this weekend and wanted to bring back one of my favorite Valentine's Day books, Jack Prelutsky's collection of poems, It's Valentine's Day, featuring poems such as "I Made My Dog a Valentine" and "Jelly Jill Loves Weasel Will." Unfortunately, never knowing that I'd one day want to revisit story, I must've given the book away (and hopefully some lucky child is reading it right now!).  I've posted one of my favorites, "I Love You More Than Applesauce," below in honor of Cupid's birthday. And let's never forget what Dr. Seuss said about love: "We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love." Happy Valentine's!

I love you more than applesauce,
Than peaches and a plum,
Than chocolate hearts,
And cherry tarts,
And berry bubble-gum.

I love you more than lemonade,
And seven-layer cake,
Than lollipops,
And candy drops,
And thick vanilla shake.

I love you more than marzipan,
Than marmalade on toast;
For I love pies
Of any size,
But I love you the most.
[Courtesy of  http://www.amphi.com/teachers/amercado/morethanapplesauce.html)