Children’s Literature Evaluation Form

Your Name: Ashley Smith

Book Title: Here’s A Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry
Author: Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters (collected) Various Writers
Genre: Poetry
Illustrator: Polly Dunbar
Publisher/Year: Candlewick Press - 2007
Evaluate the Book for the following elements
Style and Language: Using examples for the book, explain the following: Word
choices, dialogue, rhythm, rhyme and sentence length. Share unexpected insights or
interesting information the reader learns from this story. (5 points)
The word choice in this book is fairly simple because it is for young children. There is
rhythm and rhyme in the different poems. Something the children can learn is that
under each poem there is the name of the poet, but on some of the poems it says
“Anonymous”.

Character: With examples from the book, provide the following- (5 points)
Who is the main character?
How can the reader relate to the character?
Who are the supporting characters?
There is not a main character to the story because it is a poetry anthology. The reader
can listen to and relate to the separate poems and connect through the illustrations
that accompany each poem.

Plot: Summarize the major events of the story (6 points)

Because this book is an anthology, there is not a plot. The book is broken up into
sections called Me, Myself, and I, Who Lives In My House?, I Go Outside, and Time
For Bed.

Setting: Explain the place and time of this book. (2 points)

Theme: What is the main message of this book? (2 points)
This book is a poetry anthology and does not have a set setting or theme. Each
section seems to have a general Theme or Idea. Me, Myself, and I is a collection of
poems that are about “me”. Who Lives In My House? Is a collection of poems that are
about families and pets. I Go Outside is a collections of poems that are about nature
and outdoors. Time For Bed is a collection of poems about sleeping and getting ready
for bed.

Illustration: Analyze the book you selected with the following categories
Style (realism, surrealism, expressionism, impressionism, naïve, cartoon art)? (2
points)
The illustrations in this book are naïve. They are colorful, bright, and
disproportionate.

Media Choice (paints, oils watercolors, pencils, pen, charcoal, crayons, acrylic, chalk):
(2 points)
The illustrations seem to be mixed with paints and pencils.

Give examples of describe how the following visual elements are used in the
illustrations: (3)
Line: The lines were different for each poem. Some words were writing in different
formats to make it read different. In Halfway Down, the stairs go all the way to the
top of the page and curve to show that the stairs are very tall.
Shapes: The shapes in this book were different on each page. Some were very small
and some were very large, like the sun in A Circle of Sun.
Color: The illustrator used bright colors to make the pictures pop out. The colors
often referred to the words in the poems. In I Am Rose, the little girl is wearing the
color rose to add to the poem.
Texture: There are different textures on some of the pages, and even on some of the
font. The illustrator did this to help show that different pages were different poems
and were not together.
Page design (placement of the illustrations, use of borders, white and dark space and
all pages the same or different). (3)
Each page was a different poem. The illustrator created usually small images to add
to the poem but didn’t necessarily use the images to tell the story. The illustrations
on each page were colorful and there wasn’t a lot of empty spaces on each page. The
illustrator created pages for each new section to show that the next collection of
poems was about something new.

Child Development Theory: Choose either Piaget, Erickson or Social Emotional to

describe the connection to the book Chose 1 only (5 points)

Emotional Development:
Identify the age: 3-6 years
Explain the social development for this age and how the book relates
to the emotional level you chose:
During this stage of development children’s language will improve and this can create
more automatic response to empathy, understanding consequences, and will allow
more dialogues about the causes of emotions. I think the book relates to this stage
because poetry is a different “language”. It’s not read like books that the children have
read before. It can show emotions and feelings by using words more than illustrations.
Most story books use the illustrations to tell the story, but poety books, especially this
one, use illustrations more as additions. The poems tell the stories on their own. The
children will not be able to rely on the pictures and will have to listen and understand
the words instead.

1 would not recommend 2 average 3 highly recommended

Your rating of the book: 2

Why?
I gave this book a rating of 2 because it was not amazing in my opinion, but it wasn’t
bad. It is a good first poetry book to introduce children to anthologies and different
forms of writing, but it’s not my favorite. I would’ve liked to read a really long poem
that is more of a story, but I am not familiar with poetry. I did like how bright and fun
the illustrations were, and I especially liked how some of the images and pages had
different patterns rather than just solid colors.