mdettmann's review
5.0
"A poem is a small but powerful thing." This book is amazing and I wanted to just live in it. The illustrations are beyond gorgeous and this book has all the potential for some amazing poetry projects with students.
mldeblois13's review
5.0
Amazing! Ten stars would not even be enough. Beautiful illustrations dance with the entrancing poems. An awesome book to use as a mentor text.
hereistheend's review
5.0
Three poets write poems inspired by other poets and their poems, such as Nikki Giovanni, Mary Oliver, and Rumi. These poems mimic style and content, paired with incredible collage paintings by Ekua Holmes. This text would be fantastic as a simple poem book, art inspiration, or as teaching material to show children how to write “after” poems. It’s a versatile book of honor, light, and beauty, and serves as a great introduction to kids of various poets.
annebennett1957's review
5.0
This is my favorite children's book and my favorite poetry book I've read in a long time, maybe forever. Love this so much! If you are a poetry fan, you must read this book.
For my tanka-poetry review of this book and others: https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/2022/04/tanka-poetry-reviews.html
For my tanka-poetry review of this book and others: https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/2022/04/tanka-poetry-reviews.html
juliaheagle's review
emotional
inspiring
relaxing
medium-paced
2.75
I liked all the different types of poetry used and that there are illustrations for the poems. It is also a cool idea that each poem is to celebrate a certain person and that the writing is unique to fit them. This book would be great for students ages 8 to 12 roughly and could be used for examples of different types or forms of poetry.
alessandra_johnson's review
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
4.0
Coretta Scott King Book Award winner, Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets (2017) by Kwame Alexander, Chris Colderley, and Marjory Wentworth is a collection of poems where they celebrate the people writing them, and display poems of amazing authors over the past years. Assisted with the amazing illustrations that were awarded to Ekua Holmes. This book is good for older elementary school grades, but I would not use it in my classroom except for a free read, I may select a few poems from it to dive into, but I would not use the entire book.
star63's review
5.0
I love everything about this book. The homage to wonderful poets combined with the strikingly beautiful artwork. It’s a love song to my soul.
worldlibraries's review
5.0
All hail Ekua Holmes! My God, what talent! The illustrations are just a joy to behold in this book. I can't get enough of them. I will read everything she illustrates in the future. I had read her Fannie Lou Hamer book (whose subject matter is so astonishing one focuses on that rather than the illustrations), but maybe it's the scantness of the text in this book that really allows her illustrations to sing.
I loved the idea of this book. First, poetry is a niche. You are already talking about a niche reader. Then poems celebrating poets are even more niche. Presumably, every reader knows a few of these poets or they wouldn't pick the book up. There's the joy of reading a poem that perfectly captures the poet you know (tribute poems for Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, and Rumi, for example) and then there are poems that are so interesting it introduces you to poets you may have heard of but need to know better (Billy Collins, Gwendolyn Brooks, for example). Then there are poems for poets whose work you don't know at all (Judith Wright and William Carlos Williams), but this book has succeeded in getting me interested in reading.
Were I a book editor, I would try and have Ekua Holmes illustrate more poetry titles. I also particular appreciated the bio of each poet and the sorting of poets into their time period. That was helpful. But why were only two foreign-language poets included in this book? Why were the only foreign language poets considered ancient poets? Wouldn't readers benefit from being introduced to contemporary foreign-language poets as well?
I would describe this book as for ages 15 and above.
I loved the idea of this book. First, poetry is a niche. You are already talking about a niche reader. Then poems celebrating poets are even more niche. Presumably, every reader knows a few of these poets or they wouldn't pick the book up. There's the joy of reading a poem that perfectly captures the poet you know (tribute poems for Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, and Rumi, for example) and then there are poems that are so interesting it introduces you to poets you may have heard of but need to know better (Billy Collins, Gwendolyn Brooks, for example). Then there are poems for poets whose work you don't know at all (Judith Wright and William Carlos Williams), but this book has succeeded in getting me interested in reading.
Were I a book editor, I would try and have Ekua Holmes illustrate more poetry titles. I also particular appreciated the bio of each poet and the sorting of poets into their time period. That was helpful. But why were only two foreign-language poets included in this book? Why were the only foreign language poets considered ancient poets? Wouldn't readers benefit from being introduced to contemporary foreign-language poets as well?
I would describe this book as for ages 15 and above.
a_manning11's review
DNF: this is a review of the audio book version. I could not concentrate on this book. The background music is very distracting and too loud and it's incredibly hard to distinguish the poems from other text being read. I expect this title works much better in print.