City I Love - Lee Bennett Hopkins

Poetry
Illustrated by Marcellus Hall
Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2009
$16.95
32 pgs.
For: K-4- lots of examining and things to figure out
Rating: 4
Endpapers: map of the world with 18 cities labeled

Eighteen poems that are using eighteen cities around the world as their showpiece. All of the poems could really be for any city, but if you examine the illustration and check out the world map on the endpapers, you can figure out which one is being denoted. Works for me!

I like Lee Bennett Hopkins poems. I don't usually love them. And I like these. At first I wasn't sure if I liked the illustrations, but then I looked at the detail and liked them more and more. There's a very cool backpacking, traveling dog (check him out on the cover) that appears somewhere on every page, and I found I was looking for him first. Then I was looking for clues as to which city was being depicted. This ended up being a really delightful book. First impressions aren't always the right ones!

Mother’s Plea

Silence sirens.
Hush all horns.
Quiet rumbling
traffic roars.
Please
city
have
some
pity.
Promise me
not
one
more
beep?
My newborn
pigeons
need
their
sleep.