An exciting collection of poetry for young readers captures the sounds, smells, sights, emotions, and movements of a city and city life, in a collection enhanced by vivid, full-color illustrations.
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Grade 3-6?This worthy successor to Lee Bennett Hopkins's The City Spreads Its Wings (Watts, 1970; o.p.) offers readers a glorious glimpse of New York City in particular and urban centers in general. Lively chalk-and-pastel scenes?streets, parks, crowds?appear on every page with poetry that celebrates one aspect of city life. Langston Hughes, Judith Thurman, Felice Holman, and Ann Turner are among the anthologized poets. Norma Farber's "Manhattan Lullaby" ("Lulled by rumble, babble, beep/let these little children sleep/let these city girls and boys/dream a music in their noise/hear a tune their city plucks/up from buses, up from trucks...") is a particularly memorable selection. A dynamic hymn to what Lucille Clifton refers to as "the inner city/ or/like we call it/ home."?Kathleen Whalin, Greenwich Country Day School, CT
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Ages 6^-10. Skyscrapers, subways, and crowded streets are the settings for the 25 poems and pictures in this anthology. The pages are packed with people, buildings, garbage, traffic. Everything is bursting with movement, light, and sound. Some poems have such power and energy: in Carl Sandburg's pounding "Prayers of Steel," in Ann Turner's jump-rope girl ("more like she stood still and the rope flew around her" ), in Lee Bennett Hopkins' flashing neon signs ("like fireworks fighting hard to explode" ). There are connections, too: in Betsy Hearne's "Commuters" swaying from straps; in Lilian Moore's "Pigeons" commuting from sidewalk to ledge; in Lucille Clifton's inner city ("or like we call it / home" ). From the first double-page spread of buildings that scrape the sky, to the trucks that roar out of the tunnels, the images have a physical immediacy and the words have a rhythm that will appeal to the elementary grades. Condon's rousing illustrations in chalk and oil pastel, filled with light and color, express the rumble and rush of city life. Like Adoff's Street Music: City Poems (1995), this will be welcome in classrooms and libraries across the country, an exciting companion to all the volumes of nature poetry. Hazel Rochman
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Wish Come True,
By A Customer
This review is from: Sky Scrape/City Scape: Poems of City Life (Hardcover)
This book is just plain wonderful. What I thought about as I read it was how I wish someone would have exposed me to a book like this when I was a child. The beautiful illustrations, bright and capturing the spirit of each poem, pull one into the page, set the young reader in the right direction. Then the words of each poem take the reader beyond, to that wonderful place words create inside, with the intensity only poetry can create among words. If taken as a whole, the reader will find it to be a complete journey of a child's urban environment, from looking out to the city bellow in Langston Hughes' "City," on to the crowded streets, in and out of the park, the playground and the bustling workers, back to home again, and the end of another day with a "Manhattan Lullaby" by Norma Farber. The reader discovers that the poetry goes beyond the images brought to mind, to create feelings, a sense of motion while also a sense of serenity and of being in the perfect spot. The book works in so many ways to give opportunity to seeing the beauty of the city and we the people that create it. It is a beautiful collection that works to expose and enhance the young child's perception of poetry and inspire those so inclined to create their own verse.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
