Poetry- A Child's Book of Poems illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa

A Child's Book of Poems illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa

Reading Level: age 4-8

ISBN: 1402750617

Publisher: Sterling (September 1, 2007)




Through my own experience, I've learned that all children enjoy the rhythms, rhymes and imagery to be found in poetry. The poetry book that I picked is "A Child's Book of Poems" illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa. I love this book very much. It was my sweet sixteen birthday gift from my uncle who studies English literature in Hong Kong. This book includes a variety of poems and is filled with simple but meaningful poems that are written by many well known authors. The poems in this book are straight forward and simple. As I read the poems in this book to my students, they are very excited and interested in relating to the experience and daily lives. Although they might not understand every single word in the poems, but I can see some of them are already able to use some words in the poems and describe how they relate to themselves. For example, when I read the poem which is about dog, one of the girls she told me about her father had brought her a puppy for her birthday. She was telling me about its color and size, I was suprised at how much children can learn through poetry. In addition, I think if a poem is written in a simple and straight forward way, it will be easier for children who are just begining to develop their reading skills to understand and increase their interest in reading books that are in this genre, and I believe this is why my students loved when I read this book to them.

One of my favorite poems in this book is "I had a Little Doggy". As I read through every word in this poem, I was holding back my tears as I thought about my little dog "Cash". When he was a puppy, Cash fell down from the chair and broke his leg. I took a month off from work to take care of him. Tt that time he only had me and there is no one else in his life that will love and treat him as I do. Another poem that I like and that I can make a connection with is the poem "The Pancake" By Christina Rossetti. I am a pancake lover, the way that I make pancake is exactly the way that described in the poem. It seems like while the poet was composing this poem, she was watching me to make pancake.