"Published in conjunction with The Academy of American Poets."

Usher in National Poetry Month with Mr. Tiffin and his students, stars of the hugely popular How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? and The Apple Orchard Riddle. Once again, Margaret McNamara sets her playful, child-friendly story in the classroom, and this time, poetry—from metaphors to acrostics to haiku—is the name of the game. The focus here is on Elinor, whose confidence falters as she tries to write something "perfect" for Poem in Your Pocket Day and impress a visiting poet. G. Brian Karas's accessible, adorable illustrations add to the fun. Includes a list of Mr. Tiffin's tips for celebrating Poem in Your Pocket Day. "A nimble introduction to poetry as well as a sensitive look at the perils of perfectionism." —The New York Times "Pair this book with the works of Shel Silverstein, Paul B. Janeczko, Jack Prelutsky, Douglas Florian, or Robert Louis Stevenson." —School Library Journal, Starred

Thirteen classic poems by poets such as Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and David McCord are paired with parodies that honor and play off of the original poems in a range of ways. For example, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is paired with "Stopping by Fridge on a Hungry Evening" to hilarious effect, whereas the combination of Emily Dickinson's "'Hope' is the thing with feathers" with Lewis's "'Grief' is the thing with tissues" is profound, and both David McCord's "This Is My Rock" and Lewis's "This Is My Tree" hum with a sense of wonder. This playful introduction to classics will inspire imagination and wonder even as it tickles funny bones.

Born in African American work songs, field hollers, and the powerful legacy of the spirituals, the blues traveled the country from the Mississippi delta to “Sweet Home Chicago,” forming the backbone of American music. In this anthology–the first devoted exclusively to blues poems–a wide array of poets pay tribute to the form and offer testimony to its lasting power. The blues have left an indelible mark on the work of a diverse range of poets: from “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes and “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden, to “Blues on Yellow” by Marilyn Chin and “Reservation Blues” by Sherman Alexie. Here are blues-influenced and blues-inflected poems from, among others, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan, Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Cornelius Eady. And here, too, are classic song lyrics–poems in their own right–from Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, and Muddy Waters. The rich emotional palette of the blues is fully represented here in verse that pays tribute to the heart and humor of the music, and in poems that swing with its history and hard-bitten hope.

Rhyming, fanciful allegory of the creative writing process. When a child’s carefully written poem slips out of a ripped pocket, its words join randomly with other words to form funny riffs and puns all over a busy city street. The child scrambles to capture the loose words and arrange them back into poem form, only to lose them again as a storm swoops in. Eventually, the words plant themselves in the muddy ground, growing into something that might be even better than the original poem: a Poet-Tree. A poem is never really lost. The words may just need a little room to play.

This lively collection is packed with kid-friendly, "pocket-sized" poems of eight lines or less by such well-known poets as Eve Merriam, Karla Kuskin, and the anthologist herself, Bobbi Katz. The easy-to-memorize, pint-sized poems reflect many different facets of children's lives and are embellished with witty, winning art by the beloved Marylin Hafner, making a package that will be welcomed by children and their teachers.