By Kwame Alexander, Chris Colderley, Marjory Wentworth
Twenty original poems, each written to honor a great poet, from Langston Hughes to Emily Dickinson to Basho, wrapped in Ekua Holmes's blazing collage art.
Kwame Alexander and two fellow poets wrote twenty new poems, and every one is a thank-you note to a poet they love. Some borrow that poet's style, some celebrate what the poet cared about, some just say why they matter. Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou, Basho, Rumi, e. e. cummings, Naomi Shihab Nye, they're all here, introduced not with a boring biography but with a poem that shows you why someone fell for them. Ekua Holmes surrounds each one with big, bright, torn-paper collage, so the book is as much to look at as to read. It's a poet handing your child a set of doors and saying, go find your one.
By this point on the shelf a child has learned poetry can be funny and easy; this one shows how big and varied it gets, without ever losing the warmth. Because each poem is a celebration rather than a lesson, it introduces twenty different poets painlessly, and the range of styles teaches that there's no one way a poem has to sound. Holmes's Coretta Scott King Award-winning collage makes it a beautiful object, the kind a child returns to just to look. Best of all, it's a launchpad: read a tribute, love it, and go find the real poet behind it.