Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Every Thing on It


Every Thing on It
Author and Illustrator: Shel Silverstein
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers
Copyright Date:2011
# of Pages: 208
Genre: Poetry
            I was surprised last year when I came across a new Shel Silverstein book. It’s a little eerie feeling you get when you come across a piece of your childhood that you thought was concluded, but I went ahead and dove in. This poetry book is everything I remember as a child from his original work. You have poems about Zootches that ward off nightmares, transparent boys, and all manners of creative concepts. The illustrations are as funky and hand drawn as when the last Silverstein book I read.  
The illustrations are done in black ink on a lot of negative space. You’ll see maybe one or two characters per page, but the poems usually describe them in such a way that you really can’t have the text without the illustrations. Most of the lines are very smooth and curvy. The illustrations are very simple without a lot of detail in texture.
This book would be appropriate for all school age children. You could introduce this to your class when discussing writing prompts for creative characters or simple poetry. Some of the poems can be used to teach how differences are important. There are a broad number of teaching activities you can do with this.

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