Color Me a Rhyme: Nature Poems for Young People

Color Me a Rhyme is a fantastic poem book about colors. I enjoyed most of the poems, except for the two haiku color poems, which I did not like. The book contains no illustrations, instead it is filled with photography photos. These photos are beautiful, and in some instances, even breathtaking. If you like poem books, check out this one.

I thought this book was really cute since it was organized by colors. I really liked the authors decision to connect the colors to nature; this way, the poems teach children their colors, but also how they play a part in nature.

Jane Yolen, Color Me a Thyme: Nature Poems for young people tells the story of nature through colors and photographs. It's hard to pick a favorite poem. Yolen uses descriptive language in each one of her poems to define the various colors found in nature.The colors portray the nature of the poems. This book of nature poems reminds me to slow down and smell the roses from time to time. One of the most beautiful poetry books that I have ever read. Excellent!

This book travels through the color wheel, providing alternative names for each of the most common colors, and accompanying each color with a brief poem and quote, along with photographs of the natural world that capture the essence of the color. This book helps children learn the colors and helps them to expand their vocabulary or learn word associations by introducing alternative color names. For instance, purple is also amethyst, lavender, orchid, plum, violet, or wine. Gray is also ash, dove, dust, silver, smoke, or steel. Brown is also coffee, dun, khaki, mahogany, rust, tan, walnut, or umber.

Good photos and good poems combine to make this book a primer for personal creativity. With fresh visions of nature, and sophisticated poetry, this book is designed to inspire future writers.

I feel like I should love it, as it hits at least three of my interests, but there just wasn't any 'magic' or 'oomph' in it. Still, educators will probably get ideas from it, if they can get it from their libraries.

Excellent use of rhythm and rhyme in poetry. Good visualization and color descriptions. There is some wordplay in the book describing "biting the sunset sky and letting the orange juices run down my chin." Could be used as a text innovation. You could practice describing certain objects in the room with descriptive words and colors. Or you could use other senses to describe objects like their smell, taste, or feeling. There are also memorable quotes on each page of the book and gorgeous photographs. Students could take their own pictures and then use wordplay while using their senses to effectively describe their pictures.