Bookspeak!: Poems about Books

Bookspeak!: poems about books

by Laura Purdie Salas

A month or so ago a friend asked us if we were going to review any poetry books… we hadn’t, but we thought we should.  We share poetry in our classroom every day – we read them mostly from chart paper and not from the books themselves.  Why I wondered?  And so that changed.  We shared lots of poems about reading from Good Books, Good Times!  and I am the Book both with poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins.

And then we found Bookspeak!: Poems about Books by Larua Purdie Salas and illustrated by Josee Bisaillon.  The opening poem gives you an idea of the wonderful poems to follow.

Calling All ReadersBookSpeak!: Poems About Books

I’ll tell you a story.

I’ll spin you a rhyme.

I’ll spill some ideas –

and we’ll travel through time.

Put down the controller.

Switch off the TV.

Abandon the mouse and

just hang out with me.

I promise adventure.

Come on, take a look!

On a day like today,

there’s no friend like a book.

There are poems about the table of contents and an index.  There are poems in voices and poems sharing thoughts about story elements.  We have had fun sharing them with each other in our classroom.  I think you will too – make sure to enjoy that amazing illustrations, or you might want to come up with your own that show how books speak to you.