Poetry

Poetry genre

Everyday Life

Everyday Life introduces children to the vibrant world created by Shanghai’s Jinshan artists. From a watermelon harvest to an autumn festival to a child’s winter game, vivid, friendly peasant art brings everyday life in rural China into our lives. Simple, rhythmic poems, presented in English, Simplified Chinese, and Pinyin, beautifully accent each painting. Everyday Life’s colorful, bustling illustrations will capture a child’s imagination, while descriptive bilingual text invites English and Chinese readers to enjoy the sweetness of each page. ThingsAsian Kids presents a series of books introducing children to the beauty and wonder of Asia. Other ThingsAsian Kids books include My Mom is a Dragon and My Dad is a Boar, a whimsical introduction to Chinese paper cut art and the lunar calendar animals; Hiss! Pop! Boom! Celebrating Chinese New Year; and H is for Hong Kong, an international twist on the classic primer, featuring a lovely, hand-tinted cyanotype photograph.

Tofu Quilt

Growing up in 1960s Hong Kong, a young girl dreams of becoming a writer in spite of conventional limits placed on her by society and family.

Around the World on Eighty Legs

A fun, fresh animal journey! Amy Gibson and Daniel Salmieri take readers on an exciting animal adventure around the globe. As readers explore habitats ranging from the Arctic to the Savanna, they will learn fun and humorous information about the animals who live there. Ermine You’ll easily determine / though weasely, ermine / is clearly no vermin — that’s that. / But if not for the coat / on this elegant stoat, / you might think that this mink was a rat.

Orchards

After a classmate commits suicide, Kana Goldberg—a half-Japanese, half-Jewish American—wonders who is responsible. She and her cliquey friends said some thoughtless things to the girl. Hoping that Kana will reflect on her behavior, her parents pack her off to her mother’s ancestral home in Japan for the summer. There Kana spends hours under the hot sun tending to her family’s mikan orange groves.Kana’s mixed heritage makes it hard to fit in at first, especially under the critical eye of her traditional grandmother, who has never accepted Kana’s father. But as the summer unfolds, Kana gets to know her relatives, Japan, and village culture, and she begins to process the pain and guilt she feels about the tragedy back home. Then news about a friend sends her world spinning out of orbit all over again.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume IV, Issue 4

Last Song

Beautiful watercolor paintings add rich layers of mood and feeling to an old Scottish poem, depicting a squirrel family spending the day together—waking, playing, and nestling down to sleep under the eye of watchful parent.