Tan to Tamarind: Poems About the Color Brown

Tan to Tamarind: Poems About the Color Brown by Malathi Michelle Iyengar, Jamel Akib (Illustrator)
When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Tan, sienna, topaz, or tamarind? Poet Malathi Michelle Iyengar sees a whole spectrum of beautiful shades of brown. The author adds this note: "When I was a little girl in North Carolina, I hated waiting for the school bus. Every day at the bus stop a group of older kids would call me names and make fun of my brown skin, saying brown was a dirty, ugly color. I longed to trade my complexion for peachy-pink. I still remember sitting in the bathtub and hoping that if I just scrubbed hard enough the brown would go away. As I got older I began discovering wonderful stories and poems written by and about proud brown people. When I read their words, I didn't feel ugly or dirty anymore...Today, when I look in the mirror, I feel happy and lucky to see a brown face smiling back at me. Because, from tan to tamarind, brown is a beautiful color..."
Brown
My face.
Milk-tea brown.
I am brown. I am beautiful.
Brown.
Your face.
Sienna brown
or cocoa brown,
café con leche brown or
radiant ocher brown.
Our hands, our fingers.
Cinnamon brown
or rich coffee brown,
sandalwood brown or rosy adobe brown.
Our ankles, our feet.
Nutmeg brown
or mocha brown,
dark chocolate brown
or tawny golden brown.
Our eyes.
Luminous topaz brown
or sweet cappuccino brown,
shiny sepia brown
or twinkling brown.
Our hair.
Spruce brown
or bay brown,
russet brown or
deep tamarind brown.
We are brown. We are beautiful.

The Swamps of Sleethe: Poems From Beyond the Solar System

The Swamps of Sleethe: Poems From Beyond the Solar System by Jack Prelutsky, Jimmy Pickering (Illustrator)

The nation's first children's poet laureate fills a galaxy with weird, scary planets: his 19 poems describe places and creatures you wouldn't want to visit.

Mighty Casey

Mighty Casey by James Preller, Matthew Cordell (Illustrator)

The Delmar Dogs baseball team is terrible, especially Casey Jenkins, but with a little bit of faith in themselves, they finally manage to win a game.

The Cuckoo's Haiku and Other Birding Poems

The Cuckoo's Haiku and Other Birding Poems by Michael J. Rosen, Stanley Fellows (Illustrator)
A joyful primer on the pleasures of bird-watching merges haiku, notes for identifying species, and exquisite watercolor illustrations.In spare and graceful words, poet and birder Michael J. Rosen captures the forecasting call of the mysterious cuckoo as well as essential characteristics of more than twenty commonly seen North American birds. This artfully compiled field notebook — enriched by the evocative artwork of watercolorist Stan Fellows — captures the excitement of recognizing a bird, whether a darting kingfi sher, a wandering wild turkey, or a chirpy house sparrow.

A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing and Shout

A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing and Shout selected by Paul B. Janeczko and illustrated by Chris Raschka
A collection of lively rhymes and tricky tongue twisters, poems for more than one voice, bilingual poems--from classic Shakespeare and Lear to anonymous rhymes to contemporary riffs on everything under the sun.

A Whiff of Pine, a Hint of Skunk: A Forest of Poems

A Whiff of Pine, a Hint of Skunk: A Forest of Poems by Deborah Ruddell, Joan Rankin (Illustrator)
Take a lighthearted romp through four seasons in the forest with these whimsical poems.
Woodchuck's Wake-Up Morning
She snoozed away the winter
in the darkness, all alone.
There's grumbling in her stomach
and she's chilly to the bone.
Her fur is flat and crusty.
Her swollen eyelids sting.
She's starving for a salad
and a heaping plate of spring.

Ready to Dream

Ready to Dream by Donna Jo Napoli, Elena Furrow, Bronwyn Bancroft (Illustrator)
While drawing pictures of the animals she sees on her trip to Australia, a young girl named Ally meets Pauline, an aborigine woman and fellow artist, from whom Ally learns that art is not always created with just paper and paints, and that mistakes are actually happy accidents.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes, E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Steady Hands: Poems about Work

Steady Hands: Poems about Work by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer, Megan Halsey (Illustrator), Sean Addy (Illustrator)This collection of free-verse poems celebrates the doing of work in a wide variety of forms. It also celebrates workers, from the grocery store clerk to the welder to the librarian to the surgeon. The poems are short and direct, with strong fresh images. The illustrations are as original as their text- amazing multilayered collages made of paper, found objects, ephemera, photographs, archival images, and dried leaves and flowers.

TOW TRUCK DRIVER

The tow truck driver

fishes in the city:

a taxi

a sportscar

and a minivan --

three keepers

reeled in

before breakfast.

All God's Critters

All God's Critters by Bill Staines, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)

Celebrates how all the animals in the world make their own music in their own way, some singing low, some singing higher.

I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings

I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings by Elizabeth Spires

The illiterate child of freed slaves, William Edmondson (1874–1951) experienced religious visions from the age of 13 or 14. At 57 he began carving limestone; he became, in 1937, the first African-American to have a solo show at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Four of Spires' poems are taken verbatim from interviews with the artist, but elsewhere the poet mimics Edmondson's homespun language to remarkable effect, and creates narrative voices for Edmondson's sculpted characters, photos of which are shown facing the poems. Here are Edmondson's own words about stonecutting:

"I was out in the driveway with some old pieces of stone when I heard a voice telling me to pick up my tools and start to work on a tombstone. I looked up in the sky and right there in the noon daylight He hung a tombstone out for me to make...I knowed it was God telling me what to do. God was telling me to cut figures. First He told me to make tombstones. Then He told me to cut the figures. He gave me them two things..."

I Want to Be Free

I Want to Be Free by Joseph Slate, E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)
Based on a sacred Buddhist tale as related in Rudyard Kipling's novel "Kim," tells of an escaped slave who rescues an abandoned child from slave hunters. The artisrator E.B. Lewis illustrated this book. Click on the green paint to see a list of additional books illustrated by Lewis. Here's "Looking out the Window" from This Little Light of Mine.

My People

My People by Langston Hughes, Charles R. Smith Jr. (Illustrator)
My People
The night is beautiful,
so the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
so are the eyes of my people.
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls
of my people.