Once Around the Sun

This book includes a poem for each month of the year. The illustrations are colorful and appealing, and well-connected to the mood and topics of each poem. This is an excellent choice for the classroom library. When I choose poems to share with my students, I'm looking for poems that they can understand, but that have a deeper layer of meaning. (I get so tired of the literal, sing-song rhyming poems that fill up so many books!) The poems in this book are wonderful for this purpose. In September's poem, pencils "in brand-new eraser hats/bravely wait on perfect points--/ready to march across miles of lines/in empty notebooks". Lots to talk about in those few lines, with the personification of the pencils, the imagery of eraser hats, the idea of the miles of notebook lines. Every poem has some good instructional points. Most importantly, though, they are fun to read. Share this book at your own risk--it might not be returned to you!