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

“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).