Opening Days: Sports Poems - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0152002707 ISBN 13: 9780152002701

Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books, 1996

Synopsis

The vitality of the language and the verve of Scott Medlock’s illustrations truly echo the energy and joy of participating in athletics in this unique collection of sports poems by a first-string team of beloved poets, including Jane Yolen, Walt Whitman, and Gary Soto. “A handsome addition to the expanding trove of sports anthologies.”--The Horn Book

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Gr. 3^-6. The images are verbal and visual in this illustrated anthology of 18 poems about individual kids swimming, cycling, weight lifting, skiing, running, playing ball. Full-page color oil paintings illustrate each poem with movement and energy. There's a piece by Whitman, but most of the poems are contemporary. Jane Yolen's "Karate Kid," with its jerky rhythm, is fun to read aloud, and the action picture opposite picks up the boy's power and uncertainty. Roy Wesson's small poem about a 40-mile bike ride ("My feet / And seat / Are beat" ) is wonderfully extended with a double-page painting of bike, gear, and cyclist collapsed on the grass. There are dreamy poems, too, about shooting that winning goal, but there are no portentous parallels of sport as metaphor. The joyful focus here is on the physicalness of playing the game. Readers who like this may want to dip into the big YA anthology American Sports Poems (1988), compiled by May Swenson and R. R. Knudson. Hazel Rochman

About this edition

• Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0152002707
• ISBN 13: 9780152002701
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48
• Editor: Hopkins Lee Bennett
• Illustrator: Medlock Scott