2022 Post #20 -- A Good Poem is a Good Poem (for Any Age)

by Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell

Think of some of your favorite poems and poetry books. For adults, for children, for readers of any age. Chances are, one of those poems is a William Carlos Williams poem, or a Billy Collins poem, or a Naomi Shihab Nye poem, or a Shel Silverstein poem, and you can tell us what that poem is “about” in ten seconds or less.

Poetry doesn’t need to be complicated. And we feel that the best poems are actually very simple—about just one thing, a “universal” experience such as finding the last plum gone, or hearing a dog bark forever, or finding someone to help you at the airport, or taking the garbage out—told in plain language that a five-year-old can understand.

Here’s a poem about holding the door open for someone: “Open” by Linda Kulp Trout.



This is an ekphrastic poem that Linda Kulp Trout wrote for our book Things We Do. We gave her two restrictions: (1) the poem should connect in some way to this photo, and (2) needed to fit on the page, which is 8.5” square with a large font size. In response, Linda constructed a whole story and a call to action for kindness that anyone, ages 2 to 102, can understand.

Things We Do has a target audience of PreK to Grade 2, but we feel strongly that every single poem in the book will resonate with your students. Too many poetry gems in illustrated books intended for younger readers are never found by secondary students; w,e would love to change that. Yes, some students might find illustrated poems to be “baby-ish,” but for other students, these “younger” poems will spark joyful memories of a visit to grandparents, long-forgotten toys, a first science project, or the way they learned to type.

Or for another activity, invite students to “reverse engineer” the poem and find a new photo or drawing or create a collage to illustrate some aspect of the poem in a more abstract way. Here are two examples:








So let’s think twice when we decide what poems are most appropriate for our students—and what poems are “too young.”

A good poem is a good poem for any age.

​​Further Reading:




Sylvia Vardell is Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman’s University; her current work focuses on poetry for children, including the nationally recognized blog, Poetry for Children. Janet Wong is the author of 37 books for children and teens on a wide variety of subjects, including race (Good Luck Gold & MORE). You can learn more about their newest books Things We Do and Things We Eat at the Pomelo Books website.

2019 Post #6 -- A Poem in a Picture Book

by Brett Vogelsinger

Former Poet Laureate of the United States, Juan Filipe Herrera, shares his memoir in the poem-as-a-picture-book entitled "Imagine."

The book is beautifully written and illustrated, weaving some Spanish words into the English poem as it follows Herrara's trajectory as a child of migrant workers to his first experiences learning English to his post as Poet Laureate.  It concludes with the words "Imagine what you could do."

I tell my ninth-grade students that for today's Poem of the Day we are going to have an elementary school library class experience, and I ask them to gather around.  Some of them choose to sit on the floor just like they did for "carpet time" back in elementary school.  Nostalgia for this kind of reading runs deep and strong.

I make sure every student gets to ponder each page, reading it slower than most poems, for the format breaks it up into illustrated pieces we want to savor.

The last line, "Imagine what you could do," has landscape illustration paired with it that hearkens back to Herrera's youth.

In their Writer's Notebooks, students might take that same line and illustrate it in a way that inspires them and relates to either their early life or to their future goals and what they would like to accomplish.


Further Reading:

Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth-grade English teacher at Holicong Middle School in Bucks County, PA.  He has been starting class with a poem each day for the past six years and is the creator of the Go Poems blog to share poetry reading and writing ideas with teachers around the world. Find him on Twitter @theVogelman.