X. J. KennedyReviews

Has lots of fun poems for kids in second and third grade. The poems are about magic, animals, families, and songs, with colorful pictures on every page. Teachers can read some poems aloud, and then let kids explore the book and write their own poems. Great for a poetry unit! I would say it is for primary grade and also Intermediate level

This anthology contains special kinds of poetry, such as haikus, songs, and limerick, and discusses with the reader what poems can make you laugh, send messages, and teach you about images and rhythm. Knock at a Star contains lively, interesting poems from the most beloved writers and poets of our time, past and present, including Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Jack Prelutsky, Mary Ann Hoberman, and more. Kind of similar to Sing a Song of Popcorn.

Primary to Intermediate
A book of poems about animals, people, real life things and made up things, but lots of different people
This book gives me Anamalia vibes, at least in the illustrations. I wish I had time to read the whole thing. This'd be fun to read a poem a day in my classroom.

4/17/22

Amusing and wry.½

literature, poetry

00009795

I began reading this book with high hopes, but after a few pages I became confused as to the target audience. While I wasn't expecting a Disney-type of fluff, I was a little surprised to see some things that were less appropriate for children, such as a predator talking about his previous meals/victims. It just ... seemed ... wrong. Nice illustrations, though.½

The is a cute collection that almost in compassing all the types of poems and genres of poems. It is made to draw the attention of multiple children with a bunch of different interests. This collection is filled with silly poems that are funny, yet almost make no sense. It is a good collection of poems to get children started with poems and interested in poetry.

An excellent introduction to poetry, both in the selection of poems and in the discussion of them. (The emphasis is more on enjoyable and accessible poems rather than including important poets.) The organization is helpful: Section 1: What do poems do? (make you smile, tell stories, send messages, share feelings, help you understand people, start you wondering) Section 2: What's inside a poem? (images, word music, beats that repeat, likenesses, word play) Section 3: Special kinds of poetry, and Section 4: Do it yourself. Includes practical advice at the end for adults who are interested in helping younger people to learn and love poetry.

Do you love to laugh? Love to make your stomach hurt from laughing so hard? Well this poetry book is the book for you! These poems are grouped by themes such as, folklore, families, animals, monsters, etc. All of these poems are humorous and can definitely make you laugh out loud. This book is filled with funny, weird and some boring poems. I really enjoyed this poetry book because I often find myself telling jokes and laughing at them. I am always wanting to make someones day. My favorite poem from this book would have to be "Invisible Cat" because it is about a snow leopard that coughs so hard his spots came off and when it snows don't look for him because he won't be showing. I just thought that it was hilarious, but yet I think everything is hilarious. I will definitely have to add this to my children book collection. Fantastic book!!

Just love this guy--some very amusing poems, and some very touching ones. Don't really know anyone else who writes like him.

I loved City Kids. The poems and art in this book are wonderful. I really enjoyed that this book takes the idea of being a city kid and makes it a culture. As though to say, I am proud of all the bustling streets and energy from this place I live. I, myself am a city dweller and believe it is a beautiful and fun place to live. You never have to go to the "big city" to see beautiful works of art, you just have to take a walk, and so on.

A Hoarse, Half-Human Cheer was a real hoot. You may find yourself speaking like this after emerging from the book, blinking in the modern light, expecting, perhaps, a sepia tinge to the air.

I got A Hoarse, Half-Human Cheer for free through NetGalley.

X.J. Kennedy's got this great sense of the voice of the fifties, or at least the voice of the fifties as passed down to us through the generations, just soaked throughout the entire novel. And accompanying the voice is a fun little caper story involving the mob, basketball, wise-cracking secretaries, karate-kicking priests (reminded me of the Dead Alive scene with the priest shouting, "I kick ass for the Lord!"), army surplus, and a dame with a lot of moxie. There are clear villains and good guys, there is some good, old fashioned violence. There is a really, really funny scene where a renegade priest has gone off his rocker and blessed a warehouse full of Ritz crackers which, as their Catholic duty, the priests and nuns of the Catholic college at the heart of the story, the college staff have to eat in one evening, lest the body of Christ be profaned. "Surely you wouldn’t smear jelly on the Body of Our Lord?"

Well worth your time.

A fun collection of poems that embodies life in the city through the eyes of children.

The poem I read was entitled Listening to Grownups Quarreling and it was by Ruth Whitman. I enjoyed the poem because it conveyed the authors message really well. The author used many similes such as, "blown like leaves against the wall by their voices", so the reader could visualize what she was trying to say. She used other descriptive words such as, "cold with wrath" and "shaken". I did not need any illustrations to understand what the author was trying to portray that is how well written the poem was. I felt like I could sympathize with her and her upset about her parents and like it was me in the poem. I liked how the writing flowed and was paced well. Over all the poem was great.

I liked the pictures a lot.

A comprehensive handbook or text on the subject of poetry. The author is an accomplished poet and teaching scholar. XJ Kennedy first addresses the "Student", then the Instructor -- and I have his Instructor's Manual. Then he addresses "the Muse" at her altar -- to "grant that in a flash/ They [Student devots and Instructors] and I, know incense from dead ash."

I was intrigued that the introduction proper to Poetry begins with "Entrances" before turning to "The Person in the Poem". Then "Words", moving through "Connotation and Allusion" to "Imagery", "Figures of Speech" [includes Metaphor, Simile, etc] and "Symbol and Allegory". Then three sections for morphological structures of "Sound", "Rhythm" and "Form". As a kind of expansion joint in the spine of the book, "Myth" with a theory of Archetypes. Then two chapters on "Evaluating Poetry" -- what flies and what flounders, and how to know excellence.

Hint - "most clerihews will yield their all at a single look", but when Butler Yeats sails to Byzantium, "That is no country for old men". Try for Aquinian Beauty - "having wholeness, harmony, and radiance".

Finally, XJ Kennedy then turns to "What is Poetry?" before presenting a selected Anthology of _____ [number?] the Professor notes that twelve poets were selected with seven or more poems each -- Shakespeare, Donne, Herrick, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Dickinson, Hopkins, Hardy, Yeats, Stevens, and Frost. In addition, the selection favors complex work, not the "hey nonny nonny" material of which little more can be said than "Look at this".

Glosses and slightly improved orthography ("rime" preferred to "rhyme") are provided, and an omnibus Index of Authors, Titles and First Lines.

Truly, I found this a very good intro to literature, reading and comprehension takes time, and skill, and literature has been known to be a stimulus to exploring other time periods, peoples. Reading literature was not encouraged in my youth. I had poor community college literature instructor, so I was not encouraged to read literature; he wanted his students to parrot his lecturers in written papers to make the A's and B's. So I did. This book is filling in some gaps for what I missed in college and high school, helping to improve my skills or evaluate what skills I think I might have in reading and writing.

Poems by Kennedy categorized as 1)Families, 2) monsters, 3) eats, 4) Dinosaurs, 5) Birds, 6) peculiar (character), 7) ever hear tell of, 9) unlikely doings. Exploding Gravy has poems for almost all occasions. Its interesting and fun to read for kids, this set of poems I would recommend for fourth and fifth graders. The protagonist of this story is the title whether it be Dad, Medusa, or King Tut. It contains a lot of poems enough for a whole semester if one read daily.

Not high level reading, as I would expect from a college textbook, many of the short stories and poems I read in my honors english class during my freshman year of high school. I did not anticipate that I would re-read these stories my freshman year of college in English 1B: Literature and Composition.

This is a fabulous book of rhymes that encourage trying your best no matter what your situation. The illustrations in the book are outstanding and really set the scene for each poem. The use of color and depth perception are fantastic! I love this book for teaching younger students the importance of trying hard no matter what you may have going against you!

This is my go-to book for attempting to teach students about poetry. It's broken into sections that feel flexible, not didactic. The first part is called "What do poems DO?" and there are examples of lots of poems that make us smile, or tell a story, or send a message. Some poems are accompanied by some explanation, some stand alone. There are black and white illustrations sprinkled throughout, but the poems themselves are the stars.

The second section deals with the "terms" side of things, and asks, "What's inside a poem?" And here we have poems that are rich in imagery, or musical language, or rhythms, for example. The third section examines types of poems, with examples, such as limericks, songs, takeoffs, haiku, and "finders keepers" (a personal fave of mine). Finally, the fourth section gives use writing activities to help nudge us off into writing our own poems.

What I love about this volume is that it's accessible and friendly in tone. It's packed with engaging poems that will have broad appeal. And it's darn USEFUL as a way to structure poetry units and lessons.

Tied for the funniest book ever, er, compiled.

Z's enjoyed X.J. Kennedy's poetry as part of broader anthologies. He picked this up at the library yesterday because he was looking for some poems to cheer him up. Funny in spurts, good wordplay, but a little too Shel Silverstein for the boy's taste.

As for me, reading a poem about a sea horse that meets a saw horse aloud is just torture for this New England mama who's tried to lose the accent.