Description

---

From the simplest couplet to the mind-boggling pantoum, the award-winning team behind A Poke in the I shows us the many fascinating ways poetic forms take shape.

Please
Open this book for something
Extraordinary.
Twenty-nine different poetic forms await you
Inside these pages. How many
Can you master?

From sonnets to double dactyls,
Odes to limericks—
Raschka and Janeczko (and a frisky mule)
Make learning the rules of poetry
So much fun!

In this splendid and playful volume, acclaimed poetry anthologist Paul B. Janeczko and Caldecott Honor illustrator Chris Raschka present lively examples of twenty-nine poetic forms, demonstrating not only the (sometimes bendable) rules of poetry, but also the spirit that brings these forms so wonderfully to life. Featuring formal poems, some familiar and some never before published, from the likes of Eleanor Farjeon (aubade), X. J. Kennedy (elegy), Ogden Nash (couplet), Liz Rosenberg (pantoum), and William Shakespeare, the sonnet king himself, A Kick in the Head perfectly illustrates Robert Frost's maxim that poetry without rules is like a tennis match without a net. Back matter includes notes on poetic forms.

About the Author

---

Paul B. Janeczko (1945–2019) was a poet and teacher who edited numerous award-winning poetry anthologies for young people, including A Poke in the I, A Kick in the Head, A Foot in the Mouth, and The Death of the Hat, all of which were illustrated by Chris Raschka; Firefly July, illustrated by Melissa Sweet; and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems, illustrated by Richard Jones. He also wrote Worlds Afire; Requiem: Poems of the Terezín Ghetto; Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers, and Secret Writing; Double Cross: Deception Techniques in War; The Dark Game: True Spy Stories from Invisible Ink to CIA Moles, a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults; and Secret Soldiers: How the U.S. Twenty-Third Special Troops Fooled the Nazis.

Chris Raschka is the illustrator of more than twenty highly praised books for children, including Yo! Yes?, a Caldecott Honor Book; Charlie Parker Played Be Bop; I Pledge Allegiance; A Child's Christmas In Wales; and, of course, A Poke In The I, which was a New York Times Best Illustrated Book.

Praise For…

---

Readers will have the good fortune to experience poetry as art, game, joke, list, song, story, statement, question, memory. A primer like no other.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

This is the introduction that will ignite enthusiasm. The airy spaces between the words and images will invite readers to find their own responses to the poems and encourage their interest in the underlying rules, which, Janeczko says, 'make poetry-like sports-more fun.'
—Booklist (starred review)

The title poem proclaims that 'poetry jumpstarts . . . imagination'; this book shows how that's done.
—The Horn Book (starred review)

Janeczko's disciplined but accessible examples, plus Raschka's spirited Asian-inspired images, add oomph to this joyful poetry lesson, sure to be welcomed by teachers and aspiring poets everywhere.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A beautiful, beautifully clear celebration of the discipline of poetry—and the possibilities offered by that discipline—this offering will find use both in the hands of eager poets and on the reference shelf.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Featured/recommended
—Parenting Press e-zine