Worlds Afire Paperback – March 27, 2007

I had never heard of the 1944 Ringling Bros. and Barnum disaster. This book is written in blank verse and from different people's points of view. Each poem gives the perspective of someone who was at the disaster. It starts with their point of view before, during, and after the fire. It was interesting to see the various point of views and how they may have seen the situation and how the event may have been seen from their point of view. This was a very well done book and one of my favorite books written in verse.

Mr. Janeczko visited my classroom, and read a few poems from this book. My students were quite taken with it, and were pleased when I purchased it for our classroom. The subject matter is a bit heavy, but not inappropriate for my 5th graders.

Each chapter here involves a character from the fire and the poems tell the story from that point of view. Characters include performers, policeman, children, an usher and even, the alleged arsonist himself. Every poem adds detail to the events of that hot July day.I am not fond of mixing poetry with disasters, and the author is no Whitman, but the book is far from hopeless. If you are interested, and can get a cheap copy, it will probably be worth your while.

The book Worlds Afire is the best drama book I have ever read but since I'm only 13 I'm sure that there is a lot more better drama books out there I just haven't heard of yet. This book is about "a circus gone bad" as I would say. It is also a true story that is going to haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. That's how good of a picture the book draws for you as you read. As your reading you can just see all the people dying in the torturous flames of the Hartford fire. The book takes place during the circus act of the tigers. The worst thing about the fire is that there is only one escape for all those people to get out of and barely half of them did. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone shape, color or size.

Paul Janeczko's collection of poems tells the story of the infamous Hartford Circus fire of 1944. From the gradual points of view of performers, parents and anxoius children, Janeczko leads his readers through the excitement of the Big Top event, to the horror and tragedy of the fire. From parents, freaks and photographers, the reader is lead through the terror and confusion of the fire and the anguish of the hospital afterward. The best poem in my opinion was not saved for last. The touching point of view of sally Weissman, the nurse attending the emergency room to which so many victems were rushed is this books most powerful moment.

This collection of poems horrified and startled me with its moving images of a big top fire that killed hundreds of people and injured half a thousand more. I was amazed at how fast this collection read, I devoured the whole thing in forty-five minutes. Janeczko grabs you from the first word and pulls you through the story of the circus fire by telling it from the point of view of various people who were at the event. Some of the speakers will live, some will die, some spit out their last words at the end of their poems. Janeczko really gets you to feel the terror of the people fleeing the burning tent and feel for the victims, mainly women and children who were at the circus while their men were away fighting world war II. There are poems by animal trainers trying to get their charges to safety and poems by the police detectives trying to determine who lit the fire. These are sorrowful poems of a disaster one hopes will never happen again. I was amazed that the circus people waterproofed the big top with a combination of paraffin and gasoline, seems like anyone could see that was a nightmare waiting to happen. They never did catch the person who lit the fire, though a mentally ill man claimed credit. His account wasn't believed, though, and in the end the authorities were obliged to let it go, the truth just another sad casualty of that miserable day.

a glaring example of 'vanity press,' this 'author' has compiled thoroughly un-extraordinary prose and passes it off as something of importance and value. This thing was on a 99 cent table at books-a-million. I LOST 99 cents. Just wretched...

I am very excited about the new format of books written in poetry, some of my favorites being "Love That Dog" and "Shakespeare Bats Cleanup." However, both of these are fictional stories and the format really DOES NOT work for non-fiction.The poems feel uninspired and would have been much better expressed in, say, a historical fiction novel. Also, the book offers us no real information about the fire or the circus.If you would like to get books written in poetry, please check out "Love That Dog" by Sharon Creech or "Shakespeare Bats Cleanup" by Ron Koertge. Don't even bother with this one.