National Poetry Month Kid Lit Review of “Firefly July: A Year of Very Short Poems” Selected by Paul B. Janeczko

There are thirty-six very short poems in this collection, enhanced by stunning illustrations by Melissa Sweet.

The poems are divided into four sections, one for each season of the year. In Spring, for example, you will find this evocative gem by X. J. Kennedy:

“Open-billed
gulls
fighting
for fish heads
creak
like rusted
gates.”

Summer features, inter alia, the title poem, “Firefly July” by J. Patrick Lewis:

“When I was ten, one summer night,
The baby stars that leapt
Among the trees like dimes of light,
I cupped, and capped, and kept.”

In Fall you will find this wonderful thought by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser:

“What is it the wind has lost
that she keeps looking for
under each leaf?”

What would winter be without some Carl Sandburg?

“The fog comes
on little cat feet.

it sits looking over harbor and city
on silent haunches and then moves on.”

You will find other beloved poets in this collection, including William Carlos Williams, Charlotte Zolotow, Langston Hughes, Robert Wallace, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Richard Wright.

Award-winning illustrator Melissa Sweet used watercolor, gouache and paper to create outstanding mixed-media collages representing the poems. Along with the poems, the artwork demonstrates how dominant colors and moods change throughout the year. Furthermore, the pictures are full of movement and whimsey and hidden delights. Each page is full of revelations, and lends understanding to the poetry as well.

Evaluation: This book is not to be missed, even if you don’t think you are an aficionado of poetry. The poems are short and pleasing, and the pictures are wonderful.

Rating: 5/5

Published by Candlewick Press, 2014

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