POETRY PICTURE BOOK - Got Geography!

Poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins
Illustrated by Philip Stanton

2006. Greenwillow Books

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:2.93

My rating: 4

Endpapers Deep brick-cranberry

16 poems (wish there were more!)

full-colored edge-to-edge painting using deep, gorgeous colors

Latitude Longitude Dreams

Magellan moved via stars
Steered his ship by celestial rays.
Columbus sailed on over the edge
Discovering lands and waterways.

They traversed their dreams, set their course
Voyaging over oceans and seas.
Etching earth with invisible designs
Crossing rivers, rivers, ice, and trees.

These lines that slide from pole to pole
Wrapping around the watery girth
Coordinate all of us on this globe
Our home, our ship, or planet earth.

         ~ Drew Lamm and James Hildreth

If I Were the Equator

If I were the equator
I would have an attitude.
I'd boast the most about my no degrees of latitude.
I'd say, though there are other lines who run from east to west
with nearly 25,000 miles I clearly am the best.
My equidistance from the poles,
I'd mention with a laugh,
makes me the one -- the only one -- who

splits the globe in half.
Smack dab
between the Tropics
with the sun high up above,
indeed,
I'd plead,
what on earth could there be
about me not to love?

             -Kathryn Madeline Allen

Horizon
Just as the thin line
in a long division problem
divides the greater number
by the smaller,
horizon
divides earth and sky.

Gozinta, my mother called division,
explaining to me
the mysteries of math.
But earth does not gozinta sky,
held in place by horizon,
else we would all be flung,
unwilling, into the greater stars.

            - Jane Yolen

My comments:  There are some great poems in here (J. Patrick Lewis, Carl Sandburg, David Harrison, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Jane Yolen, Kristine O'Connell George, and Marilyn Singer to name a few) - but it's a very short selection.  The gorgeous, brilliantly-colored illustrations set them all off perfectly.

Goodreads: Geography is more than maps and globes, more than latitude and longitude lines, more than continents, oceans, islands, and your own neighborhood.
          In Got Geography! Lee Bennett Hopkins gathers vivid poems by sixteen poets and Philip Stanton creates glorious artwork to show that geography isn't just about finding your way. It's the jumping-off point for dreams and imagination.
          If you've got geography, you're ready for adventure. . . .