A Stick is an Excellent Things: Poems Celebrating Outdoor Play by Marilyn Singer

I love poetry, and I think if you expose children to it early, it won't seem so intimidating when they're adults. In first grade, my daughter learned about a new poem each month and she thought they were really cool.

A Stick is an Excellent Thing: Poems Celebrating Outdoor Play by Marilyn Singer is the perfect book of poems for children during the summer months. The poems are great for reading out loud together, and as the subtitle says, they celebrate playing outside. I rarely follow illustrators, but I'm beginning to recognize LeUyen Pham's work and I love her illustrations.

Do you have a favorite book of poems for children?

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A Stick is an Excellent Thing: Poems Celebrating Outdoor Play
By Marilyn Singer
Illustrated by LeUyen Pham
Publisher: Clarion Books
Year: 2012
Ages/Themes: Picture Books, Early Readers, Poetry

The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman

The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman originally appeared in Rag & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales. Here it gets its own book and B&W illustrations.

From the title you can probably tell it is the story of Sleeping Beauty. But the sleeping sickness that takes over the castle begins to spread like a plague through the whole kingdom and even into neighboring towns. It is about to threaten the kingdom over the mountains, and so its queen goes on a journey to break the spell and cure the sleeping plague. She can make it through the land without falling asleep because she happens to be Snow White who survived a year of magical sleep herself. There are lots of fairy tale retellings, but this one is truly reimagined.

I loved this book. But it is not for everyone. Neil Gaiman's work is always interesting and beautiful, but also dark and haunting. If dark is not your thing (or your teen's thing), try a Shannon Hale fairy tale instead. But if you like things a little bit haunting, a little bit scary, and a little bit different, this may just be the perfect fairy tale book for you.
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The Sleeper and the Spindle
By Neil Gaiman
Illustrated by Chris Riddell
Publisher: Harper
Year: 2013
Info: B&W Illustrations
Ages: Young Adult
Themes: fairy tales
Source: our public library