Blog Entry #11

 

Oh, No! Where Are My Pants? And Other Disasters: Poems

Edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins

Illustrated by Wolf Erlbruch

HarperCollins Publishers, 2005

32 pages                                                                     

Poetry

            I chose this book of poems, because it is adorable and has many elements that could be taught in the classroom. This book is a collection of emotion based poems about things that can happen in a child's everyday life. For example, some of the poems are about the first day of school, stage fright, accidents, bad haircuts, and nightmares. There are many different styles of poems in this collection. Some of them are limericks, diamante, concrete, and free verse to name a few. Some of the poems rhyme, but not all of them do in this book. I love the variety of selections in this book, and they are fun to read!

In Oh, No! Where Are My Pants? the medium used appears to be sketching using color pencils and pastels. Some of the background looks like it may have been done on computer, and the illustrations are paper cuttings that have been placed on the background. The background is white and off-white in color, on every page, and the characters and illustrations look as if they have been added to the page. Since the background is neutral, there is a lot of negative space that allows the illustrations and characters to be the focal point. The characters are very cute and colorful, and the off-white background and colors used give a warm feeling to the illustrations. 

        This book would be appropriate for almost all elementary grades, but the lower grades would need their teacher to read these poems. For the students that are independent readers, they would have so much fun reading the poems in this book. Once again, this would be a great selection to add to a classroom library. There are so many teachable things in this book, because they are so many styles of poems they could be taught from it. It would obviously be great for a poetry lesson, but it would be great to teach reading fluency with also. For younger students, these poems cover many emotions that could be discussed with them. The poems would make awesome journal entry writing prompts. This book has no awards or honors.