The Book Basket: Poems for Kids

Books for August 2023

Hi everyone!

August is such a strange combination of frantic activity and forced rest. Here in the southeast, the earth is usually dried out while the air is full of water. We hurry and try to clean up the weeds or tend the garden while the sun is just coming up, and then flee to the shade or the AC when the day begins in full.

One of my favorite August quotes is from Natalie Babbit’s Tuck Everlasting:

The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

Rather than do something you’ll be sorry for after, maybe try reading some poetry to your little ones. Poems catch their attention; they don’t last too long; they’re fun to illustrate if you have kids who are inclined towards drawing. Here I’ve pulled together some of our very favorite poetry collections.

A word on poetry: I encourage pre-reading on these, parents! Some of them might be too much for your little ones — they are silly, but they sometimes talk about things like giants eating children. You know your kids better than anyone, so proceed with what they’re ready for!

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Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face, Jack Prelutsky. This is a compilation of some of the poet’s best for children. Prelutsky is the quintessential children’s poet. He loves wordplay and fantastical characters. Favorites here are “Percy’s Perfect Pies,” “Early One Morning on Featherbed Lane,” and “Forty Performing Bananas.”

A bonus pick from Prelutsky, and the one my kids all read for hours on end: The Frogs Wore Red Suspenders. I wonder if my oldest can still recite “Peanut Peg and Peanut Pete”?!

Leave Your Sleep, Natalie Merchant and Barbara McClintock. A collection of classic children’s poems. Merchant set them to music in the album by the same name, and McClintock illustrated the book. I love this collection.

Over in the Meadow, Ezra Jack Keats. This is just a single poem, but it’s a lovely, simple picture book, illustrated in Keats’ familiar collage work. The story is a call and response between mothers and babies in the animal kingdom.

A Child’s Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson. Of course we were going to end here! Every family should own a copy of this classic. The Tasha Tudor-illustrated version is beautiful, but there are many others available. I’ve linked to more over on bookshop. If an old book of poetry puts you off, think for a second. I’ll bet you know some of the selections in here, without recognizing their source. How about “The Land of Nod,” or “The Swing?” And naturally, every child who struggles to go to bed when it’s still light out should hear “Bed in Summer.”

A note on purchase links: I’m a happy supporter of independent bookshops, so the links I provide will almost always go to bookshop.org. For my local readers, I heartily recommend you buy them through our favorite, Goldberry Books, but you might have a shop closer to you. Of course, you can always find these selections on That Big Website That Ships Quickly, But Not As Quickly as It Used To, and Remember How They Sucked Us All In By Being a Bookstore to Begin With? I’m also a big fan of saving money and patronizing your local library. Happy reading!