Hi there! I am wanting to find some quality poems to include in our studies. There are books from Scholastic with poems to go along with each subject but, while they are fun, they are definitely twaddle. Does anyone know of something similar but with quality poetry from classic, respected poets? Here’s a link to the Scholastic one I’m referring to: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0545150469?ref_=pd_ybh_2
I have also found that older poetry anthologies for children have much higher quality poems than what I’ve seen in more recent/modern ones.
ETA: To be clear, I meant the Poetry for Young People series. I see now as I look through the link that many other poetry books are listed. We have serveral of the PfYP books and they are just lovely.
We have the Rod and Staff book, Poems for Memorization. I ordered it from Rainbow Resource. It has suggestions by grade and are older, free of copyright poems. Often, my children choose a poem from a children’s poetry book we have read though. Favorite Poems Old & New is a good book that SCM uses and is organized similar to the Scholastic book you referred to. A Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson is good for children too.
We’ve enjoyed the poetry compilations that SCM has published. Each focuses on a single poet with a short bio and a nice collection of his/her poems. So far they have Dickinson, Stevenson, and we begin Tennyson today. Very well done.
For anthologies, my favorite is Favorite Poems Old and New. We also really like The Boy’s Book of Verse compiled by Helen Dean Fish since I have all boys.
I really like the Poetry for Young Children. It has an appropriate biography of the writer (about 4 pages) and 25 poems. They are lovely, with pretty full color pictures. Generally I can find nice hardbacks from Amazon for prices ranging from .01 to $3.00 plus shipping. If you are in a Scholastic club and have access purchasing, I know that they have these for sale in paperback.
We have also enjoyed a book called Selected Poems for Children, and are currently working our way through Favorite Poems Old and New.
There are some poets that you can get for free from Kindle, too. Edgar Guest is a personal choice – I appreciate his choice of subjects (usually family related) and his gentle wit.
As for memorizing, I usually just find one that we like in each of our poetry studies and memorize it.