Poetry Review: Hopkins Award Poetry

Song of the Water Boatman & Other Pond Poems  by Joyce Sidman                              Illustrated by Becky Prange

Bibliographic Citation: Sidman, Joyce. Song of the water boatman & other pond poems. Illustrated by Becky Prange. Chicago: Houghton-Mifflin. 2005.

ISBN-13: 978-0-618-13547-9

Review:This beautifully written book about all the many creatures found around water and how they emerge after winter, through the summer and fall and back into winter, it just phenomenal. The side notes that give you more information regarding the insect or animal mentioned in the poem helps the reader understand a little more about this creature.  The glossary in the back of the book furthers student understanding of unfamiliar words encountered in the book.  The artwork guides you through the changing seasons and has splendid pictures of the highlighted creatures in the poetry. Each poem is a tribute to the pond animals by having each poems wording represent the way the creature may sound, its way of emerging, flying, singing, swimming.... The poem gives you the effect of taking on the personality of it's subject.

Listen for Me

Listen for me on a spring night,

on a wet night,

on a rainy night.

Listen for me on a still night,

for in the night I sing.

Introduction to Share: A great place to start with this poetry book would be to locate the soundtrack of a pond and have it playing while you are reading this book.  By doing a little background research into other creatures that are located near a pond, children could write additional poetry that could be added to this book.  Another idea would be to share the poetry without sharing the artwork and have students draw their own picture of what the poetry tells them about the pond creature.  The shared poem above would be a great way to share an origami project by having students fold a frog and write descriptive words taken from the poem on their folded frog.  What other animals could be studied and written about and placed into a book in this same manner?  Forrest animals? Desert animals/creatures?  Endless ideas could be made into more poetry books.