Got Geography!: Poems

by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Philip Stanton (Illustrator)

Overview

Geography is more than maps and globes, more than latitude and longitude lines, more than continents, oceans, islands, and your own neighborhood.

In Got Geography! Lee Bennett Hopkins gathers vivid poems by sixteen poets and Philip Stanton creates glorious artwork to show that geography isn't just about finding your way. It's the jumping-off point for dreams and imagination.

If you've got geography, you're ready for adventure. . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060556013
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/28/2006
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.25(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Noted poet Lee Bennett Hopkins has edited or authored numerous books for children, including the I Can Read Books Hamsters, Shells, and Spelling Bees; A Pet for Me: Poems; and the ALA Notable Children's Book Surprises. The recipient of a Christopher Award and the University of Southern Mississippi's Medallion for "lasting contributions to children's literature," Mr. Hopkins lives in Florida.

Philip Stanton is the director of his own design studio, which produces everything from large-scale urban art installations to multimedia projects for movies, television, and the internet. He is the award-winning illustrator of numerous picture books published in Europe. Got Geography! is his first book to be published in the United States. He grew up in Florida and now lives with his family in Barcelona, Spain.

Editorial Reviews

Lee Bennett Hopkins has already collected poetry about Marvelous Math and Spectacular Science. Now he has found poems that celebrate islands, mountains and forests as well as early explorers, the compass and even longitude and latitude. A few of the selections seem forced but many others are clever and memorable: "If I were the equator/I would have an attitude/I'd boast the most about my no degrees of latitude . . . " In Joan Bransfield Graham's "Awesome Forces" we read that "lava flows,/geysers gush,/canyons are carved by a river's push." There is even an excerpt from "Lines Written for Gene Kelly to Dance To" in which Carl Sandburg explains that "when you dance it is the North Pole or the South Pole pulling on your feet like magnets to keep your feet on the earth." Philip Stanton's oversized primitive illustrations are bold and colorful. Poetry is a novel way to draw attention to geography and these poems certainly have the potential to spark more interest than finding continents or capitals on a photocopied map. 2006, Greenwillow, Ages 6 to 12.
—Karen Leggett

Children's Literature

Gr 2-4-Sixteen selections from a variety of poets explore the curiosity piqued by maps, globes, the land we live on, and places far away. The gentle, often-moving verses cover a wide spectrum of ways to explore the Earth from mapping the world to examining its surface to finding one's place within it. Poems such as Karen O'Donnell Taylor's "A Map and a Dream" or Maria Fleming's "Compass" celebrate our study of our planet, while others, such as Joan Bransfield Graham's "Awesome Forces," highlight our planet's power over us. Marilyn Singer touts the animals that were our "Early Explorers," and Jane Yolen's concluding poem fittingly ponders the horizon. The bright acrylic-and-watercolor illustrations bring energy to the pages and set the mood for each poem. This collection provides a special way to kick off geography studies and to support them throughout the year.-Julie Roach, Cambridge Public Library, MA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

"If I were the equator / I would have an attitude. / I'd boast the most about my no degrees of latitude," writes Kathryn Madeline Allen in the third poem in Hopkins's collection of 16 geography-related verses. Readers who experience a ripple of excitement when examining maps ("More than names / and colored dots") will be the most taken by this far-reaching picture book, illustrated with wildly colorful, often perspective-tweaking paintings of Earth, maps, villages, volcanoes and explorers young and old. The subject of geography looms largest, but some poems examine forests (Grace Nichols's "For Forest"), mountains (David Harrison's "The Mountain"), the sea (an excerpt from Carl Sandburg's "North Atlantic"), or the rumbling earth itself (Joan Bransfield Graham's "Awesome Forces"). While the poems are eclectic enough, the geography theme gets a little old in a one-sitting read. Still, browsing armchair travelers may be inspired to grab their compasses and boldly go. (Poetry. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews