Alphathoughts by Lee Bennett Hopkins

Bibliographic Citation:

Hopkins, Lee Bennett. 2003. Alphathoughts. Honesdale, PA: Wordsong. ISBN: 1563979799

Review:

Alphathoughts is a book of poems by the author Lee Bennett Hopkins. It is a great introduction to poetry for young readers. This book consists of 26 short defining poems for each letter of the alphabet. The topics of this book varies from gymnasium to zoo to teachers. The length of the poems are very appropriate for elementary students and is a fun read. 

Students will enjoy looking for the hidden words and thinking about the meanings behind Hopkins poems. All of the poems are lighthearted and will even allow them to experience a few aha moments. The poems are very consistent with the title and reinforce the authors purpose, to create a definition poem about an object or person that starts with each letter from the alphabet. The illustrations are bright and airy. They tie in nicely with the poems and accurately describe what the poem is about in a dreamlike way. 

This book has a great combination of light poems and poems that have a deeper meaning. For example when Hopkins explains that a alphabet is a list of 26 letters that make up every English word in the dictionary, I had to stop and think about the cleverness in this line. Most students would not think about that when asked about the alphabet, and I think this book would be a great stepping stone for many rewarding activities. 

Spotlight Poem:

J

Jelly

A 

jolly

peanut-butter

playmate

Activity: 

As I read the Jelly poem, I really liked how Hopkins used jelly's opposite "peanut butter" when defining the word jelly. A fun activity to get kids excited to write poetry, would be to have them list about 10 words and either that words counterpart or opposite. Then you could challenge the kids to create a poem where they have to define the first word by using the second word. For example; I could write the word librarian and book. My definition could be, L-Librarian-a lover of books. After students complete their definition poems, you can have them share their definitions and have other students guess their word. This activity would be both engaging and fun for students of all ages!