NPM Day #19

Today’s post brings one more picture book collection of poetry created with a holiday in mind.

Manger COVER2“Manger” is another of Lee Bennett Hopkins wonderful picture book poetry collections.  It’s all about the birth of Jesus told from the animals’ point of view from a variety of wonderful poets.  While I’ve seen similar themes, I admit I haven’t found a poetry collection quite like this.  I even found a few animals I was greatly surprised to see (including one written by Lee himself about fish, which I LOVED).  I never would have thought of some of these!

The illustrations are once again just beautifully done.  Helen Cann’s paintings are glorious, vivid, and detailed.  Each page brings a new animal painting that is perfectly paired with the text.  I honestly thought about sharing one of these poems at Christmas time and decided to wait.

So once again, I found myself beset with the dilemma of only picking one poem to share.  I thought about sharing Lee’s fish poem (but I will save that for you to find yourself), or perhaps the rooster poem (the same rooster that is pictured on the cover), but I didn’t.  This time, I chose a poem by another favorite poet of mine: Rebecca Kai Dotlich.  Yes, I met her at Highlights last fall, but I’ve long loved her work before that.  Plus I admit I was also drawn to this painting of the owl (maybe because I had illustrated a barn owl myself, not too long ago).

Owl

 

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