Quick Booktalk
This is an illustrated collection of poems by a four-year-old boy.
About the Illustrations
The pictures in this book are fine. There are diverse skin colors and styles of hair and clothing and the pictures suit the whimsical tone of most of the poems.
Story Time Possibilities
This is probably not a story time book for most settings. It could work as an ongoing classroom read-aloud, perhaps as part of a project to inspire preschoolers to compose their own poems.
Readers Advisory
I'm a little unclear about the point of this book. It was hard to discern what was so remarkable about this particular four-year-old's poetry that it warranted being published. I think I was expecting more of a Mattie Stepanek phenomenon - a kid who used his poetry to further a particular message of hope duirng a time when he was undergoing great suffering. This ended up being just a collection of four-year-old thoughts, similar to the snippets of dialogue collected by Ruth Krauss, but without the careful curation that makes her books classics. I think the poems are cute, and I'm sure the author is a lovely child, but as a book, I think this only would have worked for me had his poems been included to illustrate how adults can foster a love of language in preschoolers. Otherwise, I prefer to have kids get their poetic inspiration from the great poets, not from their peers.
Disclosure
I received a review copy of Take Off Your Brave from Candlewick Press in exchange for an honest review.
