The Wonder Book

By Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Illustrated by Paul Schmid

This is a wonderful new poetry book! This book contains a variety of poems that focus on word choice, rhyming, palindromes, etc. Most of these poems are very “silly,” which I think really appeals to young readers (there is even one poem which teaches us how to say “fart” in several different languages!). Like some of the other poetry books I’ve blogged about, this book would be a great one to help students see that poetry can be about anything and everything. The most important aspect about this book is its creativity – Amy Krouse Rosenthal does a great job varying the format and mood of her poems, and brings her readers a new surprise with every turn of the page. These poems also exemplify ways to incorporate everyday wonderings into writing – thus the name The Wonder Book – which I think is a really helpful writing strategy for young students to use in their own writing.