Novel Readings

My daughter has been studying poetry in her Grade 1 class. I approve! I especially like the careful way she reads poems aloud, as if every word is important and meaningful–just as it should be. Getting in the spirit of Poetry Month, we bought a bunch of the Poetry for Young People books through her school’s Scholastic Book Club: our (somewhat miscellaneous and heavily American) pack includes Whitman, Dickinson, Coleridge, Poe, Frost, and Shakespeare. I’m impressed with these books, not least because the editors have definitely not dumbed down the content or made painfully kid-friendly selections. As a result, she’ll be able to grow into them, rather than rapidly growing out of them. However, the real point of this post is to showcase an early effort of hers. OK, it takes a sort of prosaic turn towards the end…but she’s a practical sort of girl.