Book Review: A Poke in the I: Collection of Concrete Poems by Paul Janeczko

Bibliographic Citation:

Janeczko, Paul. 2001. A Poke in the I: Collection of Concrete Poems. Candlewick Press: Cambridge, MA. ISBN: 0763606618

Book Review:

A Poke in the I is a collection of 30 concrete poems that were selected by Paul Janeczko. The book starts out with a very clever table of contents that is in the shape of a entry table. There is also a note from the editor page at the front that explains to the reader what a concrete poem is and gives a short  introduction. After reading the notes from the editor page, I was excited to read the concrete poems and as I turned the page I was immediately disappointed. The concrete poems were not what I was expecting, and did not think that they would be appealing to a young audience. Most of the concrete poetry books out there for kids are creative poems that are eye catching and fun to read. Most of the poems in this book only include a few words, and they came across as very underwhelming. There were a few poems that I enjoyed and felt that young students would enjoy too, such as "A Seeing Poem", "Eskimo Pie", "Giraffe" and "Swan and Shadow". All of these poems were created in a fun shape, which I think is what students will be looking for when wanting to check out concrete poems. 

Since this book is a collection of poems, the topics covered vary from giraffes to tennis to day dreaming. There isn't a consistent theme in this book, besides the fact that they are all concrete poems.The poems also vary by length, there are several poems that are less than 5 words and some that are quite lengthy. Chris Raschka's illustrations are very unique and at times do not accurately describe what the poem is talking about. The illustrations are almost a little to out there for young students to be able to understand.  

I wish that I could've given this book a much more positive review, but I guess we can't like them all! I do think that some of the poems in this book would be great for teachers to model how concrete poetry is created, but do not recommend young readers to read this book independently. 

Spotlight Poem:

Popsicle 
by Joan Bransfield Graham

Popcicle

Popcicle

tickle

tongue fun

licksickle

sticksicle

please 

don't run

dripsicle

slipsicle

melt, melt

tricky

stopsicle

plopsicle

hand all

s

t

i

c

k

y

Activity: 

As I stated above, I think that there are several good examples of concrete poetry that a teacher could use to show students what concrete poetry looks like. The poem "Popsicle" is a good example of a poem that could teach students how to write concrete poetry. Teachers can read aloud this poem and show on the document camera what it looks like. After the teacher discusses the characteristics of concrete poetry, she can challenge them to pick a object in the room and write a poem about it. Once they have their poem written, the will write the poem in the shape of the object that it is about. For example, if students choose to write about a pencil their final product will be in the shape of a pencil.