April FOLD Kids 2023 Challenge: A poem or a book written in verse

By Toni Duval

This month we are highlighting books that are either a collection of poetry or stories written in verse. Poetry invites the author to explore large and complicated ideas in only a few words or lines. While these books may use a common format, they address a wide range of themes: history, resilience, and the natural world. Readers are left with the challenge of bringing their own experiences to the text and exploring ideas in depth after the poems spark their curiosity. We hope you enjoy reading in verse as your reading becomes more diverse.

1) Say Her Name, by Zetta Elliott and illustrated by Loveis Wise (Young Adult Poetry Collection)

Inspired by the #SayHerName campaign launched by the African American Policy Forum, these poems pay tribute to victims of police brutality as well as the activists insisting that Black Lives Matter. Elliott engages poets from the past two centuries to create a chorus of voices celebrating the creativity, resilience, and courage of Black women and girls.

This collection features forty-nine powerful poems, four of which are tribute poems inspired by the works of Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, and Phillis Wheatley.

Cover art for SAY HER NAME, a book of verse by Zetta Elliott, showing various illustrated Black people against a yellow background.

2) TRAILBLAZERS: The Black Pioneers Who Have Shaped Canada, by Tiyahna Ridley-Padmore and illustrated by Merryl-Royce Ndema Moussa (Middle Grade Nonfiction)

Trailblazers: The Black Pioneers Who Have Shaped Canada is a disruptive children’s book that introduces readers to Canada’s Black history through the brave, shocking and real-life stories of our country’s Black pioneers. This Canadian must-have features the incredible and under-told stories of over 40 Black trailblazers including well-known leaders such as Viola Desmond and Harriet Tubman as well as lesser known pioneers such as Mattie Mayes and Calvin Woodrow Ruck. Each short story is written in rhyme form and accompanied by beautiful illustrations so little ones are engaged while they read and learn.

The cover art for TRAILBLAZERS: The Black Pioneers Who Shaped Canada, showing various illustrated Black people against a white background.

3) Mii maanda ezhi-gkendmaanh / This Is How I Know, by Brittany Luby and illustrated by Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley, translated by Alvin Ted Corbiere & Alan Corbiere (Picture Book)

An Anishinaabe child and her grandmother explore the natural wonders of each season in this lyrical, bilingual story-poem.

In this lyrical story-poem, written in Anishinaabemowin and English, a child and grandmother explore their surroundings, taking pleasure in the familiar sights that each new season brings.

We accompany them through warm summer days full of wildflowers, bees and blueberries, then fall, when bears feast before hibernation and forest mushrooms are ripe for harvest. Winter mornings begin in darkness as deer, mice and other animals search for food, while spring brings green shoots poking through melting snow and the chirping of peepers.

Brittany Luby and Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley have created a book inspired by childhood memories of time spent with Knowledge Keepers, observing and living in relationship with the natural world in the place they call home — the northern reaches of Anishinaabewaking, around the Great Lakes.

Ardo Omer

April FOLD Kids 2023 Challenge: A poem or a book written in verse

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