"Bronzeville Boys and Girls" by Gwendolyn Brooks

This book is a collection of different poems that celebrates the "joy, beauty, imagination, and freedom of childhood". This book is about childhood from all walks of life, whether it be Bronzeville, Chicago or some other neighborhood around the world. This book illuminates all the emotions and experiences that children go through as they grow and develop. Some of the poems are about aunts and uncles coming to visit, "adult" parties, tea parties, dreams, being taken care of when your sick, , church, rich neighbors, dead gold fish, playing in the snow, being poor, claustrophobic from the city, babysitters, and much, much more! Many of these poems include repeating lines or words, and have a lot of rhyming also. The pictures are really neat. The illustrations look "child-like" which makes it even more meaningful because it has this child vibe throughout the book. Even through the writing, I hear the voice coming from a child. There are many obvious reasons this book could be useful in the classroom but one thing that set this book apart for me was how most of the illustrations and poems are about these kids growing up in the city of Bronzeville and how they experienced childhood. It would be interesting to have students read this book and then ask them to write a poem about their childhood. I bet this book would spark some ideas!