Poems for Children Nowhere Near Old Enough to Vote.

In preparing for our unit on poetry I checked out many volumes from famous poets. Being from Illinois, Carl Sandburg came to mind. Carl Sandburg lived from 1878 to 1967. Poems for Children Nowhere Near Old Enough to Vote is a volume of his work found and published after his death. I like everything about this book: the title, the introduction, Istvan Banyai's clever illustrations, and especially the poems.

The poems are about body parts and common objects. There is simplicity and logic in them. The first four lines of "pencils" gives us a glimpse of this:

Pencils are to hold when you write.
Pencils come loose unless you hold them.
One pencil writes many thousand words, if you know the words.
Pencils too pointed break their points and then laugh at you.

I enjoyed sharing these poems with my kids. I think the benefited from seeing how to look at familiar things from differing perspectives. In another of his poems, Sandburg describes music by saying, it is when your ears like what they hear. If poetry can be described as when your eyes like what you see, I would have to say Poems for Children Nowhere Near Old Enough to Vote is pure poetry.


Next Time: Sickness Disease