Friday, July 28, 2006

Poetry Friday 11

The Kidslitblogosphere has been seething this week in response to the Wall Street Journal's article Literary Losers, about summer reading programmes for children (see for example Jen Robinson's Book Page, A Fuse #8 Production and Liz's A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy), so I thought I would post a couple of poems about the joys of reading and books.

Open A Book

Open a book
And you will find
People and places of every kind
Open a book
And you can be
Anything that you want to be:
Open a book
And you can share
Wondrous worlds you find in there
Open a books
And I will too
You read to me
And I'll read to you.

Jane Baskwill


Books

Books
Lead folks
To other lands.
Books
Bind folks
With friendship's bands.
Books
Tell folks
Of bygone days.
Books
Bring folks
Tomorrow's ways!

Eileen Burkard Norris

And I love this poem by Jane Yolen Read to Me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Michele, these are excellent! Thanks for taking a positive spin on the whole summer reading thing. And I agree with you about "the "Reading Mission" programme to encourage children to read one book a week during their 6 week summer break" that you mentioned on my site. A book a week over the summer would be great. Of course, not if the kids really have to be forced to do it, and it becomes drudgery (sigh!). But that's why I love your poems today - they remind us about the joy.

Michele said...

Jen you're welcome. I confess my initial response, when I saw the posters for the programme was "Only one a week ?" (remembering the voracious reader I was as a child) - but then I decided that it was a good plan because one book a week probably seems more attainable to reluctant readers - and I'm quite sure that voracious readers will manage to read more than one book a week !

I've heard so much negative comment from teachers and parents about our Govt's "literacy hour" that I am quite concerned for children in this country - and I'm not a parent, teacher or librarian, I just care passionately about books - which is why I find the WSJ's article so utterly baffling.