April is National Poetry Month. In honor of a month set aside for the celebration of poetry, I'd like to highlight some new books of poetry for children available at the Iowa City Public Library. A special book display can be found in the children's room featuring recommended books of verse as well.

“Book of Animal Poetry: 200 Poems with Photographs that Squeak, Soar, and Roar!” produced by National Geographic and edited by J. Patrick Lewis, the U.S. Children's Poet Laureate, is a stand out. Poets featured include Lewis, Emily Dickinson, Ogden Nash, Lilian Moore, Valerie Worth and David McCord. The poems resonate with wonder at the variety, beauty and strangeness of the animal world.

Julie Andrews' “Treasury for All Seasons: Poems and Songs to Celebrate the Year” is another new anthology of children's poems. The poems are fairly short and would be good for elementary school children. Teachers and parents will enjoy this colorful book with watercolor illustrations by Marjorie Priceman, a two-time Caldecott Award Honoree. The poems are arranged by months of the year and include seasonal and holiday poems by Myra Cohn Livingston, Bobbi Katz, Marchette Chute, Walt Whitman, Karla Kuskin, Langston Hughes, Walter de la Mare, Mary Ann Hoberman, E.E. Cummings, Aileen Fisher and Eleanor Farjeon.

A third wonderful new poetry book is Nicola Davies' “Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature.” This is her debut book and she says, “I cast off my grown-up self and found the me I was at five or six. From inside that younger self I could see the world as I saw it first - not just the sights and sounds of nature but also the feelings and the thoughts about it that ran through me, strong as the tide. This book comes to you from that little girl, who sat in a barley field at dusk and felt the world turning.” This handsome book has beautiful illustrations by Mark Hearld, who used collage, printmaking and painting techniques to capture the outside world whether in the city or the country.

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Katherine Habley is the children's librarian at the Iowa City Public Library.