AGE LEVEL
3 and 4 year-olds
GENRE
Poetry
REVIEW
In this Caldecott honoree, Myers’ richly imagistic and metaphor-filled text combine with his collaged illustrations to do what I think all poetry and visual art should aspire to: reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary. We come upon a “black cat, black cat / cousin to the concrete” and follow her throughout her rounds in an urban landscape, exploring the subway station, scaling walls, and running across basketball courts and storefront roofs. Myers' words are strikingly descriptive, calling our attention to the physical features of the cat such as her “eyes like the green of empty glass bottles”, and also to her adventures, “scraping paint from fire escapes” and “hearing the quiet language of invisible trains”. Almost every sentence and phrase is accompanied by a mixed media image, including photographs which Myers took in Harlem and his own Brooklyn neighborhood. This match between words and images, along with the repetition of the refrain “…we want to know / where’s your home, where do you go?” increases the work's accessibility to young children. Through the cat's freedom to roam where she wants in the city, Myers draws attention to the way in which humans have divided up public spaces with walls and fences. Young children will not understand the meanings of all the words in this poem, but will be transfixed by the beauty and rhythm of language in a way that is equally and vitally important.
LIBRARY PROGRAMMING IDEAS
This poem could be read aloud at a preschool storytime along with other poems, picture books, and nonfiction about city life and/or cats.
I just read this poem... It's a really rhymthic poem.
ReplyDeletehow do u read this poem if its not on the page????
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