Book Description
for A Poem in Your Pocket by Margaret McNamara and G. Brian Karas
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
The students in Mr. Tiffin’s class featured in two prior volumes ( How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?, The Apple-Orchard Riddle ) spend the weeks leading up to “Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day” and a school visit from poet Emmy Crane learning about poetry, reading poetry, and writing poems of their own. Overconfident Elinor is sure she’ll write more poems than anyone. But time and again she gets frustrated when the idea in her head doesn’t come out right on paper. She wants perfection. Instead, she’s the only one without a poem to share for Emmy Crane. The poet reassures her, saying, “No poem is perfect.” And when Emmy Crane asks Elinor to talk about her ideas, Elinor’s recitation of all the things she’s seen and felt over recent days is like a poem, of course. Margaret McNamara again hits just the right tone in looking at a classroom learning experience in an engaging, nurturing picture book blithely illustrated by G. Brian Karas. Highly Commended, 2016 Charlotte Zolotow Award (Ages 5–8)
CCBC Choices 2016. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2016. Used with permission.