A Moon in Your Lunch Box (Redfeather Books)

A moon in Your Lunch box is a very good book by Michael Spooner. Michael Spooner does a good job of having a collection of poems all relating to the four major seasons, fall, winter, spring, and summer. Spooner likes to have his poems choreographed where the poems are in different shapes like circles, diamonds, squares, etc. It is pleasing to the eye and to the mind. The poems are very encouraging for a mood that enlightens.

This book may be small in size, but it is filled with plenty of poems. It has all types of poetry inside. The poems inside are very diverse as well. For example, there is a poem about bedtime prayers, but there is also a poem about snowflakes. This book would be great to share when teaching students about poetry. It would also be good to show students when they are beginning to write poetry themselves. They can look at all the different styles in this book and decide the style they enjoy most.

Selection: "Bubble Gum", This was a funny poem to me. You have to have an imagination to picture someone from U.S chewing bubble gum and blowing a big bubble like a hot air balloon and then picking her up and not stopping until it reaches France. What a free trip?

This book contains many different poems for young children. There are poems about shapes, sounds and rhythm. It was hard to choose what poem I enjoyed the most because they all were very cute.Even though the book is small, the poems are worth reading. These poems would be great bedtime stories for kids.

This book has a lot a great poems for children from grades 1 thru 5. The poems are really great and at the level where a 7 year old can read and understand the poems. Its a Kaleidoscope of poems with feelings, thoughts,seasons and changes.

Brent Hagen
Children’s Lit
Feb. 08.08

Poetry
A Moon in Your Lunch Box by Michael Spooner
Illustrations by Ib Ohlsson

Michael Spooner has a unique way of putting his pen to poetry. The poems were for the younger elementary student. What makes Spooner’s poetry unique is the illustrations. The poems are simple in thought, for example’ A Full Moon, Tonight the Moon, The Setting Moon, Winter Nights, and Winter Dreams just to name a few. The poems all have a simple rhyme and rhythm. What makes the poetry book special is the way the illustrator illustrates in and around the poetry. They appear to be one in the same. The poetry does not go along the traditional lines of straight lines and predictable endings. The illustrations are integrated show more in such a manner as they appear to be complete with each other. In retrospect, Spooner, the author appears to be giving his daughter simple little every day life lessons. With this simple magical technique Spooner, was able to cross generational lines with simple rhyme and simple illustrations.
The illustrations were an intricate part to the poetry book. The cover was the only part of the book in cover. The illustrations on the inside were simple and ink drawings. The detail was adequate, however, for the manner in which the poetry was written the illustrations were more than appropriate. show less

Summary:
One poem that i liked was "full moon." It talks about the moon being a hold in the sky that the day washes through. It would be a good poem to read to a child before bed. Another one i thought was funny was "Dont kill the bee." It talked about how bees are more afraid of you than you are of them.

Personal Reaction:
Not all the poems in this book are good. I only read a few that even flowed well.

Classroom extention Ideas:
The Poem Full Moom would be a good poem to read to the younger kids before naptime.
Older kids could also write their own little line of poetry.