By Colorado Kids Advisory Board member Sara Scott

Title: Poetry By Heart
Author: Compiled by Liz Attenborough
Illustrator: Emily Hare
Publisher: The Chicken House
No. of pages: 124

Are you a reader that loves to hear the rhyme and rhythm of a song or sentence? If so, Poetry By Heart is a wonderful book for you! This book is full of children’s poems. It is great for kids who haven’t read that much poetry and aren’t used to it. There are lots of expressive and funny illustrations to go with the poems too. I loved this book because the poems were divided into sections. For example, if you felt like reading poems about animals you could flip to the “Fur and Feathers” section. Or, if you felt like reading a scary poem there is a “Ghostly and Ghastly” section! There wasn’t really anything I disliked in this book at all! Poets you have probably heard of whose poems are in Poetry By Heart are Robert Louis Stevenson and William Shakespeare. To help you find things throughout the book, there are three indexes at the back, Title, Author, and First Lines.

A few of my favorite poems from Poetry By Heart are “Dogs”, “Starlight”, “The Eagle”, and “Waking Up”. There are also classic poems such as “The Night Before Christmas”.

I recommend the book Poetry By Heart to kids of all ages. For example, bigger kids will enjoy the hard and emotional poems, middle ages will enjoy the fun poems, and little kids will love the illustrations and the easy, short poems. I also think this is a good book for parents to read to their kids.

In conclusion, Poetry by Heart is a fantastic book for Colorado kids everywhere! (December, 2002)