Side Walk Chalk: Poems of the City
Written by Carole Boston Weatherford
Illustrated by Dimitrea Tokunbo
Wordsong Boyd Mills Press, 2001
32 Pages
Poetry
This is a book of poems about what it is like to live in the city. Some of the topics of the poems include things like getting a haircut at the barber shop and going to the laundry mat. All of the poems portray something about what it is like to live in the city and family life in the city. Most of the poems center around African American children and their families.
Tokunbo used watercolor to create the colorful illustrations for this book. All the pictures are very vibrant and full of color. The colors match up with the theme of each poem. For example a poem entitled Aunt Lizzie's Pictures is about how the child's aunt has all her family members pictures on display along with some influential African American's pictures. The illustration for the poem contains lots of blues and purples to help portray the tranquil feeling the child would feel when she is at her aunt's house.
This book would be good for grades 2nd and up. The book would be great when teaching about different cultures. It would be a great way for students to see how city life is different from country life. Students could compare and contrast their lives to the life of the child who lives in the city. This book would be a great way to help students who live in the country to understand that not all children live in the same places they do. This book would be a great way to have students write about something about their everyday lives in the form of a poem. This book is a really great book that students could be encouraged to read on their own also. The teacher could read a few poems out loud to the class as part of a book talk and encourage the students to read it on their own to discover more about city life.
No comments:
Post a Comment