What is home? Revel in the ineffable sense of belonging in anthologist Paul B. Janeczko’s diverse selection of poems with sure appeal for children.
Home is shoes tucked under the bed while you sleep, or fancy-dancying at the neighborhood block party. It’s buttermilk biscuits and gospel music at the church picnic. It’s traffic lights and parked cars; rooftop views as far as you can see; ice cream trucks and yellow boots; sharing breakfast cereal and boiled eggs with your brothers; or running through sprinklers with water on your lips, dripping from eyelashes like fat raindrops. Whether we hang our hats in a walk-up apartment in the city, a farmhouse in the country, or any place in between, the poems in this collection celebrate the places where we live: our homes, our streets, our towns. Gathered by eminent poet and anthologist Paul B. Janeczko, these thirty-four inviting verses are paired with light-filled illustrations by Hyewon Yum evoking the warm details of daily life.
Contributors include:
Francisco X. Alarcón * Dave Crawley * Walter de la Mare * Rebecca Kai Dotlich * Eleanor Farjeon * Aileen Fisher * Betsy Franco * Charles Ghigna * Nikki Giovanni * Nikki Grimes * Avis Harley * Patricia Hubbell * Langston Hughes * Reuben Jackson * Paul B. Janeczko * X. J. Kennedy * Irene Latham * Lois Lenski * Myra Cohn Livingston * Wes Magee * Lilian Moore * Naomi Shihab Nye * Lin Oliver * Linda Sue Park * Iain Crichton Smith * Gary Soto * Amy Ludwig VanDerwater * Hope Vestergaard * Nicholas Virgilio * Charles Waters * Janet Wong * Valerie Worth * Charlotte Zolotow
Paul B. Janeczko (1945–2019) was a poet and teacher who edited numerous award-winning poetry anthologies for young people, including A Poke in the I, A Kick in the Head, A Foot in the Mouth, and The Death of the Hat, all of which were illustrated by Chris Raschka; Firefly July, illustrated by Melissa Sweet; and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems, illustrated by Richard Jones. He also wrote Worlds Afire; Requiem: Poems of the Terezín Ghetto; Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing; Double Cross: Deception Techniques in War; The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from Invisible Ink to CIA Moles, a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults; and Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis.
Hyewon Yum is the author and illustrator of several acclaimed books for children, including Mom, It's My First Day of Kindergarten!, for which she received the Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award; This Is Our House; The Twins' Blanket; There Are No Scary Wolves; Last Night, and Saturday Is Swimming Day. She also illustrated A Piece of Home by Jeri Watts and I Am a Bird by Hope Lim. Hyewon Yum lives in Brooklyn with her family.
This posthumous compilation selected by distinguished anthologist Janeczko beautifully captures the essence of home; Yum’s art enhances this, centering each poem firmly into diverse communities. . . . People and places are diverse in artistic expression, allowing readers to recognize themselves in different poems . . . an outstanding poetry compilation about the meaning of home.
—School Library Journal (starred review)
A posthumous gathering of short poems on themes of home and neighborhood. . . . A luminous sendoff, rich in happy memories and sweet nostalgia.
—Kirkus Reviews
This collection of variously contemplative and playful poems offers an intimate picture of daily life from a child’s point of view. . . offers a mix of poetic styles—all very accessible to the young reader and listener and all unified by Yum’s engaging illustrations in colored pencil and watercolor. Timeless scenes ranging from urban apartment life to small-town backyards and front porches are full of a pleasing diversity of children and adults.
—The Horn Book
The poems here are previously published pieces that, when read all together, confer a nostalgic, laid-back tone. . . a cohesive, teachable collection about different kinds of communities.
—Booklist
A sights-and-sounds anthology that invites readers to observe the appreciable beauty of, as phrased by X.J. Kennedy, 'wherever you sit down.'
—Publishers Weekly
This collection of variously contemplative and playful poems offers an intimate picture of daily life from a child’s point of view. . . the collection offers a mix of poetic styles—all very accessible to the young reader and listener and all unified by Yum’s engaging illustrations in colored pencil and watercolor.
—The Horn Book
Thirty-three poets lend their voices to this anthology, including Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Naomi Shihab Nye and Charlotte Zolotow. . . Lots of opportunities here to talk with the kids about their own neighborhood.
—The Pioneer Press
