Every month, our son is required to do a 4th grade Book Talk Project. This month's genre is poetry. Not having had much experience with reading or writing poetry, he did not know which book to choose. I named several famous American poets and, when I came to Robert Frost, he chose that one. I think he chose Frost because that's the only name he remotely recognized.
After thinking about this for a day, I thought I could solve the problem by buying the book American Poetry from the Poetry For Young People book series, which contained poems from a wide array of American poets. Unfortunately, after looking through the book, our son said he did not understand any of the poems. I certainly do not blame him. He's 10 and I'm 40, and I still needed to read the explanatory paragraph that accompanied each poem in this book. I even tried to walk through Walt Whitman's Oh Captain! My Captain with him since it was about Abraham Lincoln, one of his favorite historical figures. He still just looked at me blankly . . .
That's when I pulled out this book titled Kids Pick the Funniest Poems: Poems That Make Kids Laugh, a book I had previously purchased, but had not given to him yet. I have to say that he loved this book and is anxious to share his favorite poems from this book with his class. The poems are about topics that every child can relate to. For this project, he chose to create a book jacket as part of his presentation. He's nowhere near done with it yet, but I was so impressed with his illustration for the front cover that I just had to share it.
Of all the things our 4th grader could inherit from his parents, I am thrilled that he has inherited my husband's and my love of drawing. Of course he also inherited my need for perfection, which is why it took him 3 hours to complete this illustration. And, he inherited my husbands tendency to procrastinate, which is why he started on his monthly project six days before it's due. Still, in the end, he always produces something wonderful that we can all be proud of.
