Poetry Books for Kids

I am always looking for poetry appropriate for kids... that... doesn't... rhyme. With all of their exposure to nursery rhymes and songs, it seems children come to the classroom thinking all poetry must rhyme (which of course is the hardest kind of poetry to write well). So I was delighted recently when I found these two poetry anthologies at my library:

A Writing Kind of Day: Poems for Young Poets, by Ralph Fletcher

A Maze Me: Poems for Girls, by Naomi Shihab Nye

Both volumes contain poems written by adults, but in the voice of a child or preteen. Subjects vary, circling around the experiences of childhood, and are treated honestly with the seriousness of a child. These are not "fluffy" my-brother-picks-his-nose kind of poems; they are heart-felt and resonate with me even as an adult. And they are minefields of metaphors, similes, imagery...all of the things we try to teach kids to do in their work! A few examples:

Memory Loss
by Ralph Fletcher
It's not like losing a wallet,
or even your best friend.

Losing your memory is
losing yourself.

Each sentence Grandma speaks
makes me think of crossing a river.

She steps from word to word
until suddenly

she stops in the middle, disoriented.
Should she go back or keep going?

Mom takes Grandma by the hand
and helps her safely to the other side.


If the Shoe Doesn't Fit
by Naomi Shihab Nye
you take it off
of course you take it off
it doesn't worry you
it isn't your shoe


Supple Cord
by Naomi Shihab Nye
My brother, in his small white bed,
held one end.
I tugged the other
to signal I was still awake.
We could have spoken,
could have sung
to one another,
we were in the same room
for five years,
but the soft cord
with its frayed ends
connected us
in the dark,
gave comfort
even if we had been bickering
all day.
When he fell asleep first
and his end of the cord
dropped to the floor,
I missed him terribly,
though I could hear his even breath
and we had such long and separate lives
ahead.