Poetry

If you think poetry is boring, think again! We have all kinds of poetry books, including silly poetry books, serious poetry books and poetry books that will gross you out. We also have poetry books about all kinds of subjects, from basketball to planets to insects to underwear (yes, underwear!). We even have books that tell you how to write your own poems! Poetry can be found on our Children's Room shelves at J 811.

Here's are some poetry possibilities:

1. Falling Up by Shel Silverstein (or ANY poetry book by Shel Silverstein!)
2. Pieces of the Sun by Jack Prelutsky, our country's first-ever children's poet laureate
3. Good Sports by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Chris Raschka, who won the Caldecott Medal last year
4. Monster Goose by Judy Sierra: a book that takes nursery rhymes and makes them gross and silly
5. A Kick In the Head by Paul Janeczko: a book that introduces you to different poetry forms in a very fun way
6. Sad Underwear by Judith Viorst
7. The Way I Feel Sometimes by Beatrice de Regniers, a book that includes the wonderful poem, "The Mean Song"
8. Rim Shots: Basketball Pix, Rolls and Rhythms by Charles Smith Jr.
9. Diamond Life: Baseball Sights, Sounds and Swings by Charles Smith Jr.
10. Laugh-eteria by Douglas Florian

We've got lots more poetry: just ask us for more suggestions!

For adults, or anyone who uses the books on the adult side: The 800s are organized by the language of the literature. (More on this later.) The 810s are American literature, 820s English, 830s literature in Germanic languages, and so on. The 3rd digit usually tells you the form: 1=poetry 2=plays 3=fiction 4=essays and so on

And so American poetry in English is in 811, English-English poetry in 821, German poetry 831, French poetry 841, Italian poetry 851, Spanish poetry 861, Latin poetry 871, Greek poetry 881. And what about all the other languages in the world? They get squeezed into miscellaneous sections. So Germanic language literature that isn't actually in German (say Dutch, Norwegian, etc.) is all going to be shoe-horned into 839 somewhere. And what if the language isn't western Indo-European? All those other literatures and going to be found in the 890s.

Remember Dewey's world was late 19th century and Euro-centric. 90% of the literature numbers, the 800s, are saved for European languages. Dewey probably never thought much about poetry from the people who live in the rain forests. Nevertheless there are places saved for them. 895 is for the literatures of east and southwest Asia, 896 for African literatures and 898 for South American native literatures.