Renaissance School
Classroom Library
Suggestions: Poetry
Aguado, Bill
Paint Me Like I Am: Teen Poems
from WritersCorps
Young people have a lot to say about race, drugs, abuse and self-image as seen in these honest and sometimes raw poems written by teens who have taken part in a writing program run by a national nonprofit organization.
Alarcon, Francisco
and Maya Christina Gonzalez
From the Bellybutton of the Moon and Other Summer Poems
A bilingual collection of poems in which the renowned
Mexican American poet revisits and celebrates his childhood memories of
summers,
Laughing Tomatoes and Other Spring Poems
A bilingual collection of humorous and serious poems sketch family, nature, and celebrations.
Iguanas in the Snow and Other Winter Poems
This celebration of winter is an ode, as well, to
Angels Ride Bike and Other Fall Poems
Poems in Spanish and English combine with large, vivid pictures
to relate a wonderful story celebrating the daily encounters of city life.
Appelt, Kathi
Poems from Homeroom: A Writer’s Place to Start
A wonderful collection of Appelt’s poems for young adult
readers, accompanied by fascinating accounts of how and why the poems came to
be, along with writing exercises to inspire readers to create their own
accessible poetry.
Blaustein, Noah
Motion: American Sports Poems
These poems rescue sports from our society’s focus on superstars, multimillion-dollar contracts, and gold medals to capture champions and losers, competitors and spectators.
Carlson, Lori
Cool Salsa
A spirited, significant collection of 36 poems successfully
celebrate the particular experience of growing up Latino in the
Cisneros, Sandra
Loose Woman: Poems
A candid, sexy and wonderfully mood-strewn collection of
poetry that celebrates the female aspects of love.
Cotner, June
Teen Sunshine Reflections: Words for the Heart and Soul
Thoughts and poems that are meant to help the reader through
the tough times, offering encouragement during challenges and inspiration to
reach goals.
Dakos, Kalli
If You’re Not Here, Raise Your Hand: Poems About School
An illustrated collection of poems about a variety of
elementary school experiences.
Fletcher, Ralph
Poetry Matters: Writing a Poem from the Inside Out
A concise, nuts-and-bolts guide to creating poetry.
Relatively Speaking: Poems about Family
A collection of poems that describe the experiences and
relationships in a close-knit family.
Buried Alive: The Elements of Love
A collection of poems about young love and all of its complications.
I Am Wings
Written from the point of view of a smitten young man, these
33 short, free-verse poems narrate the ups and downs of a teen romance.
Franco, Betsy
You Hear Me: Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys
Through these mostly free-verse lines, the hopes, dreams,
fears, and desires of young men from different cultures and backgrounds shine
through in words that are openly honest.
Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writings by Teenage Girls
A collection of poems, stories and essays written by girls twelve to eighteen years of age and revealing the secrets which enable them to overcome the challenges they faced.
George, Kristine
O’Connell
Swimming Upstream: Middle School
Poems
Middle school, with all its trials, tribulations, and triumphs, is portrayed humourously and poignantly through the eyes of one girl.
Glenn, Mel
Class Dismissed! High School
Poems
Seventy poems about the emotional lives of contemporary high school students
Class Dismissed II:
The subjects of these poems are fictional adolescents based
on actual student that cut to the bone of adolescent life.
Foreign Exchange: A Mystery in Poems
The tale is presented by its cast in a series of free verse
conversations or ruminations, as young people describe their personal worlds,
older adults express a range of attitudes toward teenagers, and nearly everyone
hold stereotypical views.
Giovanni, Nikki
Blues for All Changes
Fifty-one poems challenge the fates and invoke the precarious state of our environment and other topics seminal to one of our most compassionate, outspoken observers.
Love Poems
More than twenty new poems center around the power theme of love.
Gordon, Ruth
Pierced by a Ray of Sun: Poems About the Times We Feel Alone
This collection presents mood poems about differences and
feelings, using a diverse range of contemporary voices to present many
different viewpoints about modern times.
Baseball, Snakes and Summer Squash: Poems About Growing Up
The author takes an unsentimental look at his childhood in
this collection of poems for young people.
Jan Greenberg
Heart to Heart
Forty-three poets choose a piece of modern art and write a poetic response to it.
Herrera, Juan Felipe
Laughing Out Loud, I Fly
A series of poems in both English and Spanish celebrating the author’s childhood.
Holbrooke, Sara
I Never Said I Wasn’t Difficult
The collection depicts the thoughts of teenagers and their
outlook on everything from boring school to overreacting parents.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett
Opening Days: Sports Poems
A collection of eighteen poems about various sports
including baseball, skiing, karat, and tennis.
Janeczko, Paul B.
Seeing the Blue Between: Advice and Inspiration for Young Poets
Letters of advice from 32 of today’s best poets for teens
are accompanied by their poems.
Poetspeak
A collection of 148 poems on a variety of topics by 62
modern poets who provide commentary of their individual works.
The Place My Words Are Looking For
Thirty-nine
Johnson, Dave
Movin’: Teen Poets Take Voice
An anthology penned by teens who participated in poetry
workshops at the New York Public Library focusing on real-life subjects.
Koertge, Ron
Shakespeare Bats Cleanup
When a fourteen-year-old baseball player catches
mononucleosis, he discovers that keeping a journal and experimenting with
poetry not only helps fill the time, but it also helps him deal with life,
love, and loss.
Korman, Gordon
The D-Poems of Jeremy Bloom
A collection of poetry held together loosely by a narrative
involving a year in poetry class.
The
The poetry, all about sports, actually provides examples of many different forms: haiku, concrete poetry, quatrains, and couplets.
Levy, Constance
Splash! Poems of Our Watery World
Water runs through our lives; it is, in fact, essential to
all life. It takes many forms: It can be
the liquid that quenches our thirst, the rain that pours from the sky, or the
juice of a ripe tomato.
Morrison, Lillian
Way To Go!
Morrison describes the sports enthusiast’s spirit and
determination to try again.
Nelson, Marilyn
Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem
This volume sets history and poetry side by side, and
combined with the author’s personal note on inspirations, creates a unique
amalgam that brings the past to life.
Nye, Naomi Shihab
What Have You Lost?
From 140 contemporary poets, Nye gathers observations, ruminations, and informal prose comments on the theme of loss.
Come With Me: Poems for a Journey
Nye challenges readers with a range of her own poems, linked thematically as an investigation of journeys to inner spaces as well as literal journeys to real and imagined places.
This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World
A poetry anthology in which 129 poets from sixty-eight
different countries celebrate the natural world and its human and animal
inhabitants.
The Space Between Our Footsteps
100 poets from 19 different Middle Eastern countries share
their innermost feelings about place, family, war, and peace.
Quiet Storm: Voices of Young Black Poets
A collection of sixty-one poems celebrating the African
diaspora through the eyes of youths of African descent from the
Rosenberg, Liz
The Invisible Ladder: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poems for
Young Readers
This anthology combines modern poetry with commentary by the
poets and photos of them as children and adults.
Sones, Sonya
Stop Pretending: What Happened
When My Big Sister Went Crazy
In a sequence of short, intense poems based on the author’s own experiences, a 13-year-old girl suffers through her shifting feelings about her sibling’s mental illness.
Soto,
Junior College: Poems
This book of poetry is both a place for discovery and an
exploration of how discrimination limits one’s potential for growth.
Turner, Ann
Poems of First Love
Thirty-six ultra-short, free verse poems trace a teen’s relationship during one school year from first blush to intense crush to melancholy memory.
Vecchione, Patrice
Whisper and Shout: Poems to Memorize
A collection of poems on different subjects and in different styles, that lend themselves to memorization.
Von Ziegesar, Cecily
SLAM
An introduction to slam type of poetry, filled with everyday
emotions.
Watson, Esther Pearl
The Pain Tree
A collection of poetry culled from teen Web sites and magazine that address a wide range of emotions while coping with the trials of growing up, sometimes under less than ideal circumstances.
Worth, Valerie
All the Small Poems and Fourteen More
A virtual catalog of brief meditations on little earthly
wonders form amoeba to zinnia.