Poetry Friday: Canadian Poems for Canadian Kids
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
Canadian Poems for Canadian Kids edited by Jen Hamilton, illustrated by Merrill Fearon (Subway Books, 2005) is exactly what the title says it is — twenty five poems by Canadian poets for kids about life in Canada. With a foreword by the late and well known Canadian poet, P.K. Page in which Page states of the importance of poetry for the development of childrens’ minds, the book launches into its poems with aplomb beginning with Irene Watts‘ “Stories.” “Everything/ has a story,” Watts asserts, and “a world full of stories” is what we need “to grow.”
I liked the poems that best celebrate creativity and imagination. The late Marianne Bluger‘s “I Chased a Butterfly” encapsulates the childhood desire of wanting to catch that flitting beauty that is the butterfly, but the poem ends with the plain but rather profoundly stated:
I chased that butterfly
one whole day
but it’s all right with me
that she got away.
Ken Ward’s “I Want to be A Painter” is about the envy two creative artists — one a baker, the other a painter — have for one another’s work. And Page’s poems “Cloud Watching” is about the imaginative exercise of seeing shapes in the clouds.
I think I would have liked this collection more if there were a diversity of poets represented here that spoke to the multicultural aspects of Canadian identity. Certainly there are many fine Canadian poets out there that have done just that and could have been included in this anthology. I was sorry that the editors couldn’t have tracked some down. However, that aside, Canadian Poems for Canadian Kids introduces some fine poetry by Canadian poets for children.
This week’s Poetry Friday host is Breanne at Language, Literacy, Love.
