this book includes several poems top show different homes and cultures. Throughout the book, the author conveys the theme that home is where the heart is. I love how the book gives readers insight into different cultures. This book would be great to use with students because it would give them the opportunity to think about different cultures and relate the poems to their own cultures. ( )

"Home to Me Poems Across America" by Lee Bennett Hopkins and iillustrated by Stephen Alcorn is a great book! The first thing that I liked about this book was the editor's note to the readers in the very beginning of the book. The editor's note talked about how home influences our way of life. By including this note the editor gets the reader thinking about their home life and connected with the story before they even begin reading. When I read the editor's note I started to think about my home, for instance, and how it is a small country area that is very quiet and slow-paced. Another aspect of the story that I think the author did a great job with was writing each poem in first person. I think that by writing each poem in the first person point of view. By doing so, the author emphasized the central message, which is that everyone calls home something different. By having each poem written in first person, the reader can more easily compare their home life to that of the speaker, because it's almost as if the speaker is talking to the reader personally. I also liked the illustrations in this story. I think that the illustrator did an excellent job by wrapping the illustrations around each poem. Instead of the poem being on one page and the illustration on another; the poems were basically written inside of each illustration. For example, on page the home was described as a city lifestyle, in which, the illustration was a city that the poem was engulfed in. I feel that by having the poems inside of each illustration, the reader truly gets a feel of what the speaker's home life is about and can almost imagine or feel themselves there. A final thing that I think was awesome about this book was the author's use of wordplay. For example, on one page the word, "slow", was written as, "s l o w." The author played with the way the word appeared on the page, which connected a visual with the literate meaning of the word. ( )

The theme of this book, as the title suggests, represents different regions of America and ethnicities as well, with authors such as Jane Yolen, Janet Wong, and Lillian M. Fisher. The illustrations are appealing and go well with the poetry.

A collection of poems.

Genre: Poetry
Age(s): 6-8 ( )

This is a collection of poems about the significance of home throughout different states. This is a great book to show the meaning of rhyming to students. As a writing assignment, they would have to write a poem with any rhyming pattern about Louisiana. I could use this book when covering Louisiana history. ( )