Poetry for Kids: Carl Sandburg

I love Carl Sandburg's poetry. Got this book to use to introduce poetry/poets in our homeschool. There is a lexicon provided with each poem to define words that the younger child may not be familiar with. The accompanying pictures for each poem are very appealing.

This was actually not the book I wanted..my mistake, not anyone else's! I ordered it for my teacher daughter who teaches in a very low income area and was trying to build a small in room library for her 6th. grade students. Although this is a very nice book, the one I actually meant to order was one that looked similar but had more well known selections from several different authors. I was in a hurry when I ordered it and did not look carefully at my selection. The book is very nice, however, and was delivered in a timely matter and in good condition.

Beautiful book! The pictures are amazing.

Beautifully illustrated. Wonderful book for children.

Good quality - just as described.

The beauty of poetic language and imagery can spur the imagination of young children. It is the mystery of poetry that it can inspire and elicit emotion independent of intellectual 'understanding'. We don't have to know how a poems works, or its every reference, to be moved. A poem is not a riddle to solve. A poem 'is'.The MoonDance Press Poetry for Kids series provides a wonderful resource for introducing children to the magic of America's great poets.The latest book in the Poetry for Kids series is Carl Sandburg. Thirty-five age-appropriate poems for children age 8 to 13, selected by Kathryn Benzel, are accompanied by colorful original illustrations by Robert Crawford.The Introduction is a brief biography of Carl Sandburg. He was born in 1878 to immigrant parents in Galesburg, Illinois. Typical of his generation and class, after he left school after 8th grade to work at menial jobs. He moved to Chicago before hopping a boxcar at age 19 to see America.Sandburg's poems are 'of the people,' from the prairie to the city factories, embracing his experience of American life from Reconstruction to the Depression, through two world wars to the invention of television and transcontinental flight.The poems are divided thematically: poems about people and poems about places.Poems about people include interactions with the natural and human-made world.A boy studies nature in Young Bullfrogs, while I Am the People, the Mob extols workers and creators, the common people who make the world go.Jazz Fantasia celebrates the free-form quintessential American music while Buffalo Bill recalls a boy's idolization of the Old West.Poems about places begins with Sandburg's most famous poem, Fog, and includes Limited about the 'crack train' of the nation carrying passengers who don't look beyond their next stop.River Roads, Valley Song, and Between Two Hills--poems about the country--are balanced by Street Window, The Skyscraper Loves Night, and a selection from 'Smoke and Steel.'The illustrations by Robert Crawford are beautiful: A man and his dog under the flowering fuchsia canopy of a crab-apple tree at dusk; a bright Jack-o-lantern at night; a girl on a pier under a purple sky reflected upon the lake.Included are helps for parents or young readers: Explanations for Understanding offers definitions and historical information, and "What Carl Was Thinking" has a brief description of the poem's meaning or origin.Poetry for Kids Emily Dickinson was published in October 2016.These are wonderful books for the classroom, for family reading, or to gift to older children.I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

What a wonderful book! I love that words are defined that may be difficult for children to understand and that the poems are explained in the back of the book for young readers who do not know what farms are like or how telephone calls were first made in this country.The art is beautiful. I just wish more care had been taken with the fonts and colors because some of the poems are hard to read against the art background.I think they make wonderful gifts for second graders and older.

"I am the people - the mob - the crowd - the mass."Younger readers will be introduced to Carl Sandburg, a poet for the people. This is a collection of 35 of his poems and is just one book in the Poetry for Kids series.Professor Kate Benzel has chosen the poems for this amazing collection and award-winning illustrator Robert Crawford has done a magnificent job of visually making them come alive.Commentary on the poems, definition of key words that may be difficult for children to comprehend, and a lovely bio of the poet's life is included. I love the segment, "What Carl Was Thinking" at the end of the book that exposes the author's thoughts and intentions as he wrote each poem.I was very impressed with the book and feel it would be one you would be proud to add to your poetry collection. Our children need exposure to great classic poet's work and this is the perfect book to do just that. I highly recommend it.