I love good poetry anthologies for children or adults, and Read-Aloud Poems, edited by Glorya Hale (Black Dog and Levanthal, 2012) is a nice selection of poetry both classic and modern poems that parents and children can enjoy together. My son and I read a few poems each day for about a month, and he enjoyed them, as did I. I was impressed by the variety of types of poetry were represented in the volume, from Lewis Carroll to Shel Silverstein to Robert Frost and Maya Angelou.
The book is organized by my son subject: poems that tell stories, poems about family, poems to think about. The only poems Raisin did not like were some of the longer poems that told a story: given his young age (he’s only 5), I don’t blame him. When poems go on longer than two pages, they are hard to follow. In general, though, the volume was fun to read through. Although no one poem stands out at the end of our reading together, I do recall a number of times silly poems made him laugh or he commented on concepts addressed in the poem. We certainly enjoyed reading through the collection of poems in Read-Aloud Poems.
Note: I read a digital copy of Read-Aloud Poems courtesy of the publisher via netgalley.com
