LS 5663 - Module 1 - Hopkins Collection - Book Review

Hopkins, Lee Bennett. 2009. City I love. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers. Illustrated by Marcellus Hall. ISBN 9780810983274.

This is a delightful and fun little book of poetry based on interesting sites and scenarios of New York City. Many of the poems have a rhyming and rhythm as you read them aloud. There are lots of short lines, white spaces, and colorful illustrations, depicting various common city activities. There are fun scenes, like playing in a fire hydrant's water, and imagining how building a skyscraper is similar to performing high above a 3-ring circus.

The reality of living in a big city is also presented in a poem showing that on rainy days, taxi cabs never stop, and on subways, there are so many people that you will never, ever know.

There is poetry here showing the noise, music, heat, weather, and lights of New York. This is a great book to share with children. The words are carefully chosen to provide lots of sensory imagery through the sight, hearing, tasting, and touching of things people relate to a big city.

I especially loved and understood the poem, "Mother's Plea"

Silence sirens.

Hush all horns.

Quiet rumbling

traffic roars.

Please

city

have

some

pity.

Promise me

not

one

more

beep?

My newborn

pigeons

need

their

sleep.

Just like the mother bird, here, I once had the experience of silently praying for silence as a freight train loudly roared through my town, just as I was trying to get a very cranky baby to sleep. I have lived in a big city area before, and I understand the constant noise. On my first trip to New York City, I was awakened multiple times by trash trucks, police sirens, car horns, and voices calling into the night. Each of the poems in this book are easily connected to real city life. They are fun, but realistic. City children will easily be able to understand them. Children from more rural communities may need some further explanations. It would be fun to show short video clips from TV programs or movies of lots of city scenarios, like skyscrapers, streets full of lights, bridges full of congested cars, constant city noise, etc. ,to compare and contrast this book to that. Children will enjoy describing their own experiences and thoughts on city life in a short discussion.