Check Out Firefly July: A Year Of Very Short Poems Articulated By Paul B. Janeczko Distributed In Visual Format

book is well done and the illustrations are creative and interesting, but most of the selected poems are not of a style I can appreciate, which made it hard to truly enjoy the book.
The imagery woven by the words is good, but of the thirtysix selected poems, I only really liked three the others I found interesting to a degree, but neither educational nor personally appealing.


"Firefly July," the titular poem by J, Patrick Lewis, is my favorite it's imagery, wording, rhythm, assonance, and rhyme all appeal to me, and furthermore it has a distinct nostalgia factor for anyone who has ever caught fireflies.


"In Passing," by Gerald Jonas, intrigued me with its use of alliteration and assonance, A subject which would have otherwise been bland became interesting and easily visualized through his choice

of words and use of syllables, and Sweet's simple illustration echoed the quirkiness of the poem.


"Snow Fence," by Ted Kooser, appealed to me because of the vivid, precise image it portrayed, and the illustration Sweet coupled with the poem complemented the words and imagery in a way that enhanced the enjoyability of each component, visual and verbal.
If you have to buy a great book for your little ones and yourself, this is a perfect one, How beautiful most of these small but meaningful poems are!

A perfect collection to read and have! Unusual summertime free verse poems, This poetry anthology is organized by season and begins with Spring, It includespoems for each season of the year, This anthology includes a wide range of poets including Emily Dickinson, Langton Hughes, Joyce Sidman, and Ralph Fletcher, Each of the poems is short and various types of poetry are included which along with the beautiful illustrations by Caldecott Honoree Melissa Sweet, make this an excellent addition to a classroom library.
I accessed this title on YouTube but have ordered a hard copy from First Book, I can't wait to see the illustrations in person, I anticipate using this book as we explore the changes we see in each season as well as using it as a mentor text for poetry writing, Firefly July : A Year Of Very Short Poems, by Paul B, Janeczko and colorfully illustrated by Melissa Sweet is the recipient of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, The book is a collection of poems that are relevant to the four seasons, The book starts with spring and the illustrations and poems of the book are wonderfully composed and complement each other well, The poems are from many different authors from, Langston Hughes to Eve Merriam, Each of the seasons has a collection of a few short poems and the colors of the book help the reader feel the season, yellow and bring colors for spring and summer and darker colors like brown and deeper shades of blue for the fall and winter.
The book contains a total ofpoems that can be read and enjoyed by most of your readers, I would highly recommend this book as an additional to any young readers library, Is reviewing works of poetry essentially a ridiculous thing to attempt Im not trying to be facetious or anything, I honestly want to know, It took me a long time to appreciate poetry on any level, but when I did I was able to come to it understanding that its closest relative in the arts world is music.
Music that a person enjoys is a deeply personal experience, Only you can replicate the feelings and emotions that certain combinations of notes inspire, By the same token, poetry should be purely a oneonone experience, And part of the job of books of collected poems for kids is to get each child reader to find that one poem that speaks to them, Maybe if they find one, just one, that hits home then that person will seek out other poems, Maybe itll expand their little minds, lead them to modes of thought they might not have reached otherwise, If the ultimate goal of childrens poetry is simply to inspire in kids a love of words and wordplay, then critiquing books that seek to do that is a uniquely difficult proposition.
I mean, how can you judge something thats so subjective The best that you can do is simply determine if the poems in a collection are good, put together in a logical way, and worthwhile reading.
And in the case of Firefly July the answer to all three of those queries is yes and yes and you betcha,

Four seasons yieldpoems, Selected by childrens poet Paul B, Janeczko, Firefly July slowly introduces each time of year with gentle, short verses that lure you in, Each poem highlights a different element of the season, whether its a cat stalking through the daisies in the summer or winter wind “tearing itself to shreds / On baredwire fences.
” A pleasing mix of canon poets Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, etc, and canon childrens poets Charlotte Zolotow, J, Patrick Lewis, James Stevenson, etc, the book touches lightly on those elements that make a season memorable, With illustrator Melissa Sweets interpretations of each poem in tow, this collection proves to be the kind of book of poetry no library or poetryminded household can seriously be without.


Like I said before, so much of critiquing poetry is subjective, So on an entirely personal level, I can at least tell you that I didnt really begin to warm up to these poems no pun intended until we hit the Summer section.
Nothing against the Spring, mind you, Its there that youll find a lot of the old standards like the William Carlos Williams poem “The Red Wheelbarrow”, But Summer proved a lovely surprise, Langston Hughes waxing eloquent on “Subway Rush Hour” followed by Joyce Sidmans lovely “A Happy Meeting” which conjures up memories of the e, e. cummings poem “in Just” and then the titular “Firefly July” by J, Patrick Lewis which really does deserve to have its name appropriated for the title of this book combine to give one a true, rounded sense of the season, Teachers and parents would do well to read this book to kids and then ask them what their favorite season is, Mine now appears to be summer, Who knew

The real advantage to this book is in the subtitle, “A Year of Very Short Poems”, Though I struggle in vain to find the right way to sell my poetry collection in months other than April, I cant help but think that maybe size does matter.
Books containing long and lengthy poems like the delightful sitelinkA Pond Full of Ink by Annie M, G. Schmidt will be ideal for the already indoctrinated, but if youre trying to lure in the poetry shy, short is the way to go, Short and sweet. And brother, it hardly gets any sweeter than this,

Melissa Sweets art was an interesting choice as illustrator, It makes sense when you think about it, After all, her Caldecott Honor was bestowed upon the picture book biography of poet William Carlos Williams sitelinkA River of Words, In this book she is the sole artist interpreting these various works, There are no head scratching moments, No times when you feel as though shes taking advantage of her position as the illustrator, She switches vantage points and views consistently as well, keeping the viewer awake and interested, Of all the pages, my favorite Sweet was the twopage spread accompanying Carl Sandburgs poem “Window”, There, panel after panel after panel show scenes from a railway car looking at the countryside, Later, Ted Koosers “Snow Fence” contains the striking image of crows perched on a simple red fence set against the pure white drifts, One might argue that Sweet takes few risks with this book but if Im going to trade in beauty for risk, I figure thats a pretty fair deal,

As I am a librarian and not a teacher I dont usually think up classroom applications for books when I read them, Firefly July proves to be the exception to the rule, Reading this book I could imagine all sort of interesting uses, For example, teachers might want to actually revive an old school standard and have the kids in their classroom memorize one of these poems for recitation type purposes, Weve seen some books collect poems for this very specific purpose see: sitelinkForgetMeNots Poems to Learn by Heart, selected by Mary Ann Hoberman but in this particular case I think the quality of the selections recommend it highly.
There is, after all, no better way to learn a poem heart, body, and soul than to incessantly read it over and over and over again,

With its pedigree in place its little wonder that Firefly July entranced me as much as it did, I dont consider myself a poetry connoisseur so it takes something special to break through to me as much as this book did, I still maintain that reading poems of any sort is a personal business and that what suits the goose will never do for the gander, That said, for a work of introductory poems specially selected so as to calm and comfort the reluctant poetry reader, Firefly July aint a bad way to go.
Lulling and lovely, theres something for everyone inside, All you have to do is just give it a chance,

For ages. Five, because it's "amazing, " Not perfect. But some of the highest quality poems made accessible to newbies and children that I've ever seen,

See, I judge poetry by the images and feelings a poem evokes, I don't care for ballads, nor do I consider most nonsense to be real poetry but rather, nonsense is more a sort of wordplay like puns and riddles, Good haikus are poems. Much music besides ballads are poems I like to see, This book suits me. It has some classics it also has some new to me,

Consider Joyce Sidman, she of the brilliant sitelinkUbiquitous: Celebrating Nature's Survivors and other collections, Here she is represented with:

A Happy Meeting

Rain meets dust:
soft, cinnamon kisses,

Quicky, noisy courtship,
the marriage: mud,
. .
I'll have to look for more by sitelinkRaymond Souster after reading

Spring

Rain beats down,
roots stretch up,

They'll meet
in a flower,
.
One of Carl Sandburg's inclusions is new to me:

Window

Night from a railroad car window
Is a great, dark, soft thing
Broken across with slashes of night.


I mean, look at that, Look at the word choices, Broken, not wrecked or cracked slashes not stripes or cuts, . . talk about those with your youngsters,

Ok, as I said, the book isn't perfect, For example, included is one of my favorites, Dust of Snow by Robert Frost, But the key to the poem is "a day I had rued, " And the illustration shows father and child heading home from an afternoon's sledding, They rejoiced in their day they didn't rue it!,