I love children's poetry. I've been reading Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses again. Three poems that I read today are wonderful for toddlers. When my grandson first noticed his shadow, I took the chance to say the first verse of "The Shadow" to him. "The Swing" is for trips to the park. And when toddlers and pre-schoolers question why they have to go to bed when it's still light out, "Bed in Summer" is perfect. I'm usually pretty good at remembering first verses. I'll go back to the poems I want to memorize to the end.
When I first started teaching high school English, I was surprised at how excited students were to read and learn poetry. I had expected a collective boredom based on a rather general sense in society that poetry isn't read anymore. During my entire teaching career, I found that students memorized poetry easily and enjoyed reading and discussing it.
Once time in the book room to check out novels, I asked my ninth graders to quiet down. "You can talk," I said, "but soft." The students chimed in, "...what light through yonder window breaks." We'd memorized parts of Romeo and Juliet earlier in the year, and the students had already made Shakespeare's words a part of who they were. Reading and quoting poetry to very young children has the same effect, even if they can't yet verbalize what they've learned. It's a great gift to give them.
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