Forget-Me-Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart

Forget-Me-Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart

Author: Mary Ann Hoberman

Illustrator: Michael Emberley

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Copyright Date: 2012

# of pages: 144

Genre: poetry

            This book really stood out to me in the book store. The front cover displays children their work around a large elephant. When I read the introduction on page 5, I had to read it. The message and purpose of this book is to encourage children to build skills for memorization and a relationship with the poetry genre. The poem increase in complexity though the book, but like the title says, the goal is to get children to learn poetry by heart.

            The illustrations are done in pencil, watercolors, and pastels with a lot of negative space. The lines vary from smooth to rough depending on the poem’s message or feeling. There are a few pages where there is no negative space and the illustrator uses dark blues for night time and cool blues for under water. He makes use of reds to accent energy or excitement. Most of the illustrations are either of animals with human characteristics and/or people being funky and silly.

            This book is introduced and compiled by the Poetry Foundation’s Children’s Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010 Mary Ann Hobertman. She selected these poems in such a way would be especially useful to teachers. Since the poems increase in complexity throughout the book, you could introduce poetry at any grade level and use it in discussions of memory or reading comprehension skills. This would also be a great book for students who struggle with orthographic skills by giving them an incremental way of increasing their reading performance.