A chapbook is a small book, typically a collection of poems, typically within twenty to forty pages, sometimes organized around a theme, sometimes not. Even though chapbooks have a long and storied past, here at the book bunnies blog, we have not had the occasion to review any till now. And Sleeping With Dogs: A Poetic Memoir is just right for a blog hosted by bunnies!
This is indeed a little book of forty pages, with a cute pink cover; on the cover is a stylized image of a woman in a patch of a bed, sleeping surrounded by six little dogs, some curled up, some fully awake and curiously staring at the observer / reader. The patch of bed is covered with little pink hearts. So already you might imagine, this book is not only about dogs (as you probably had already figured out from the title) but it is also very much about love. And indeed love is the overwhelming theme of the book.
Barbara Barth’s writing journey began when she lost her husband in 2008. She began writing but also she began adopting dogs. Words and dogs became her lifelines. This chapbook collects her free verse poetry about her dogs and herself growing into the woman she is today with her dogs. Barth tells us the stories of Foxy-Lady, who knew her husband before he passed away, Bray, the first adoptee after, and many many others, via simple but evocative sentence fragments, which somehow come together into fluid free verse.
Out of the twenty-three poems in the chapbook, ten are written as odes to specific dogs: “Foxy-Lady” (2), “Bray” (5), “Annabelle” (6), “Queen Chloe” (7), “Odette” (10), “A Dog Named Studly” (11), “The Last of the Big Dogs” (12), “The Christmas Gift” (13), “Carmella” (17), “PS. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” (23). Each of these ten poems introduces its subject, a dog with their own personal back story, and tells the story of how they came to join Barth and her life. Most of the dogs are rescues, so often the back stories are sad or uncertain at times, but most of these poems end with joy, joy of a once-sad dog having found a new home that welcomes them. (Carmella shows up again in “Morning” (19) as the mischievous main character, crafty and still lovable.)
Then there are two poems, about two dogs each, that tell stories of new members joining a big happy family and making it happier. “One Week Two Dogs” (8) tells the story of how Barth first met Rascal and April on the same day, but took them home on two separate days. April immediately becomes Miss April in Paris, and they both find themselves full members of the growing new family Barth has been building around her. “Dumb and Dumber” (14) tells the story of how father-and-son duo Moe and Happy Dog, join the family. The Dumb and Dumber become loving nicknames to them and celebrate their natural silliness as they like to fool around.
The rest of the poems are not focused on individual dogs. Rather they tell the story of Barth’s life today, full with dogs and dog love. The very first poem in the chapbook, “”Why I Write” (1) introduces Barth to us a bit more. After having read the brief prose introduction to the collection, this poem eases us into the poetic form. “Sleeping With Dogs” (3) and “Six-Pack” (4) set the tone early towards the beginning of the chapbook, telling us how the dogs came to Barth’s life and made it whole. “Chihuahua Love” (9) tells us of her transformation from a “dog lady with big dogs” to a “dog lady with chihuahuas”. “Storm” (15) and “After the Rain” (16) tell us what happens in her household during and after a rainstorm. “Night Moves” (18), “Morning” (19), “Patio View” (20), and “Four Seasons” (21) offer more snapshots of her life with her dogs: a full life filled with love and joy and many other intense emotions lived in the moment. Finally “Paint Party” (22) tells us what Barth might just be doing today in her home: painting, with her four-legged friends surrounding her, content.
Being a household of four bunnies we do not have any dogs living with us. We are typically very timid near four-legged creatures who are bigger than ourselves. But Barth makes the best case for inviting dogs into your life. She does not preach or explain. She just tells her own story, in which she happens to find love over and over and over again. (Of course one imagines she is giving a lot of love back. It is impossible for this much love to flow only in one direction.)
All in all, I have very much appreciated the opportunity to read and review Sleeping With Dogs: A Poetic Memoir. And I’d recommend it highly to all sorts of folks, young bunnies and old bunnies, and everyone in between. I know that the little bunnies in my own household will love the book just as much as I did. If you like reading poetry, or if you love dogs, it is probably a no-brainer: you should read this book. Otherwise, if you just happen to have only a little space in your day to read a couple short pages at a time, then this little pink book might just be what you need to fill your heart with some joy.
Sprinkles has read Sleeping With Dogs: A Poetic Memoir by Barbara Barth, as part of a blog tour hosted by Women on Writing, and recommends it highly to all bunnies great and small.
Today Sprinkles reviews three poetry anthologies that can help young bunnies get acquainted with a great many wonderful poems all at once: 101 Great American Poems collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project, Favorite American Poems edited by Paul Negri, and How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets.
Sprinkles reviews 101 Great American Poems collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project, Favorite American Poems edited by Paul Negri, and How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets.
How poetry comes into one’s life will differ from one bunny to another. But hopefully some day you find yourself interested in a poem. A poem that makes you think differently or feel very strongly about something. And that makes you think, hmm, maybe I could enjoy this poetry thing. But there is a whole wide world of poetry out there. Where do you start? Anthologies might help. So today I want to share with you some thoughts about three poetry anthologies that young readers might find of interest.
The first one I will write about is 101 Great American Poems, collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project, and published originally in 1998 by Dover. Maybe you are aware that Dover is a publisher that specializes in republishing classical works that have been out of print for a while. However, 101 Great American Poems is a new anthology, first published by Dover. In fact all three books I am reviewing today are published by Dover in the same manner. I am glad Dover does publish original works, too, especially because they are often clean books sold at very reasonable prices.
Sprinkles reviews 101 Great American Poems collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project.
Anyways, let us get back to 101 Great American Poems. As you can tell, the book is a collection of one hundred and one poems from thirty-nine American poets ranging from colonial times to early twentieth century. The poems are organized by their authors, who themselves are organized according to their birth years. So the book starts with a poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet, who was born in England in 1612 and was one of the early colonialists in America, and ends with “The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden who was born in England in 1907 and wrote this poem in 1939 soon after he moved to the United States. Each poet is introduced with a couple sentences of biographical context, and then we are offered one to ten poems from each. About seventeen poets have one poem under their names (including one from Abraham Lincoln, who one might or might not have expected to find in a poetry anthology), while two have ten (Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost). Most other folks are represented by two to three poems.
Sprinkles is reading 101 Great American Poems collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project.
We have here a collection of mainly classical American poetry. Well-known poet names like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, T.S. Elliot, E.E. Cummings, and Langston Hughes are accompanied by names that some of us might not be as familiar with. And even from those names that might be familiar, we might get new poems, that might not have shown up in our own studies of poetry in school but will open up whole new worlds for us if we let them.
In the introduction to 101 Great American Poems, the poet Joseph Brodsky is quoted to have said that “Books find their readers, and if not, well, let them lie around, absorb dust, rot, and disintegrate. There is always going to be a child who will fish a book out from the garbage heap.” The introduction ends: “Books wear out. Great poets pass away. But the spirit of poetry is indestructible.” This book is a neat collection that could help a young person reach in and find that one poem (or three) that will bloom new flowers in their heart.
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Next up, I want to say a few words about Favorite American Poems, edited by Paul Negri. First published in 2002, the version I read is a large-print one, “designed for those who need or prefer large print and meets the standards of the National Association for the Visually Handicapped.” I must say that having quite poor eye sight myself, I find large-print books very much more accessible. And for a poetry book, the format works really well, even if you do not often need large print.
Sprinkles reviews Favorite American Poems edited by Paul Negri.
The book is organized again in terms of the poets, and the poets are listed once more in the order of their birth years. There is much overlap in between these two books, and so you will not be surprised to hear for example that the first poet presented is Anne Bradstreet again, with her “To My Dear and Loving Husband”. This one showcases thirty-four poets, and the big names in the previous book show up all here too. But this book has poems from John Greenleaf Whittier, Jones Very, Henry David Thoreau, Julia Ward Howe (“Battle Hymn of the Republic” had to appear of course!) and James Whitcomb Riley, who did not show up in 101 Great American Poets. On the other hand, we do not get to read poems from Abraham Lincoln, Sara Teasdale, Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, Archibald MacLeish, E.E. Cummings, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and W.H. Auden.
Sprinkles is reading Favorite American Poems edited by Paul Negri.
Biographical notes of the overlapping poets are mostly if not all identical. Poem selections also overlap but not completely. For example the same ten poems from Emily Dickinson, the same seven from Walt Whitman, and the same five from Edgar Allan Poe show up in both books, but both Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ell Wheeler Wilcox are represented by two poems in Favorite American Poems while only one per is showcased in 101 Great American Poems. Favorite American Poems seems to showcase more poems for the same poets in general, while 101 Great American Poems perhaps tries to be more selective.
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The third book I will talk about is How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People, edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets. First published in 2006, this book is more explicitly directed towards young readers and it shows, not only in the title but also in the way the poems are organized and presented.
Sprinkles reviews How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People, edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets.
Unlike the first two books I reviewed above, How to Eat a Poem is organized around themes. The seventy poems in the book are categorized into four groups. The first group is titled “Magic Words: Poems about poetry, books, words, and imagination”. This section contains the poem that gives the book its title: “How to Eat a Poem” by Eve Merriam. The second group is collected under the title: “My Heart Leaps Up: Poems about the beauty of the natural world”. This section starts with William Wordsworth’s poem “My Heart Leaps Up When I behold” which gives the section its title. It also contains four simple and beautiful haiku as well as several famous poems like “The Tyger” by William Blake and “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman. This is also where “The Desert is My Mother” by Pat Mora appears side by side with its Spanish version.
Sprinkles is reading “The Desert is My Mother,” and its Spanish version, by Pat Mora in How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People, edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets.
The third section is titled “I Think Over Again My Small Adventures: Poems about travel, adventure, sports, and play”. In here we find the poem that gives the section its title: “I Think Over Again My Small Adventures”. a poem of Native American origin with its original composer unknown. Here we also find a poem by Shel Silverstein (“Sick”), another by Langston Hughes (“Harlem Night Song”) and another by Elizabeth Bishop (“One Art”). The last thematic section is titled “Hope is the Thing With Feathers: Poems about love, friendship, sadness, hope and other emotions,” and as you might imagine, it contains Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the Thing with Feathers”. It also contains Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee”and several others that explore a wild range of emotions. The poets in this book are a lot more diverse, in their national, ethnic, and historical origins. And the goal seems to be to show to the young reader that poetry is fun and worthwhile.
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Overall I think all three books do well what they set out to do. 101 Great American Poems starts with the poet Joseph Brodsky asserting that “poetry must be available to the public in far greater volume than it is.” In Favorite American Poems, we are told that “we read poetry because at its best, it lives and sings.” And as we are told in the foreword to How to Read A Poem, poet Ted Kooser tells us that poetry “should be fun”. I believe these ideas are very well represented by each of these books.
I think the youngest bunnies may benefit from starting with How to Eat a Poem, and any bunny may decide to pick one or the other between 101 Great American Poems and Favorite American Poems. But make sure you get your paws on at least one of these books, and leave them lying around in the house. The young paws will eventually reach them and start reading. And then their journeys into the world of poetry will really take off.
Sprinkles recommends that readers check out at least one of the three books mentioned here: 101 Great American Poems collated by the American Poetry & Literacy Project, Favorite American Poems edited by Paul Negri, and How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young People edited by the American Poetry & Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets.
For the last couple years, at the end of the year, we have been doing a New-Year-ish thing of talking about all the books we have read through that year. (You can find our recap of 2022 here, and here is our recap of 2023.) This year, we continue this new tradition and take a look at our reviews for 2024.
[2024 saw the bunnies read and review many books, both new and classic. You can find a full list here.]
The book bunnies review the books of 2024.
Sprinkles: So maybe this year, we can start with Marshmallow.
Marshmallow: Sure. I have reviewed many, many books this year. I liked all of them, but there are a couple that I really, really, really liked. But maybe we can begin with the series I read and enjoyed.
S: Makes sense to me.
M: The first series I started this year was the famous Hunger Games series. Here are my reviews of the three main books: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. And here is my review of The Hunger Games: The Illustrated Edition. I had never read these books before and quickly learned exactly why they are so revered. I was also shocked by how deep some of the themes were (family and friendship of course, but also lessons about the impacts of war, greed, violence, trauma, and poverty). This is an amazing series (I love it!) I would recommend to all reasonably mature bunnies (maybe like 12 and up?)
S: Yes, I remember how much you were affected by those books.
Marshmallow enjoyed reading the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins as well as Powerless and Reckless by Lauren Roberts.
S: What about the other series you started this year?
M: Another series I began to read this year was the Powerless series. Here is my review of the first book: Powerless. And here is my review of the second one: Reckless. Unfortunately, not all of the books are out yet, so I am looking forward to reading and reviewing the last (?) book of this series next year. This is hands-down my favorite YA fantasy-romance series. I generally find this genre to lean too much into romance, but this series maintains the perfect balance. I would 100% recommend this book to all interested readers (YA probably), especially those who have been wronged by the ridiculous amount of romance infiltrating the YA fantasy section.
S: I still have not gotten around to reading those books, but I know you have really enjoyed them. So maybe they should go on my 2025 reading list.
M: Maybe they should! The third series I have begun this year is the Enola Holmes series. I originally presumed these books to be easy and basic because the cover was not what I would characterize as a serious, intriguing mystery would look like. However, these books really take you to an entirely new time period, and the adventures of Enola Holmes never fail to excite, delight, and inspire.
S: You have only read and reviewed three of the books though, right?
S: Because they put together a few things you like. History, graphic novel format, humor-
C: Yes, what is there not to like? But there are many more books in the series, and I really hope to continue with those in 2025. And of course you know that my all-time favorite series is still Tui T. Sutherland’s Wings of Fire?
S: Yes, that is true. and you loved that one, too!
C: Yep.
This year, Caramel read two more Wings of Fire books by Tui Sutherland, one more Narwhal and Jelly book by Ben Clanton, and three books from the Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series.
Sprinkles: So Marshmallow, you have read many other books this year. Maybe you can tell us about the highlights. Maybe we can begin with the fiction?
This year Marshmallow’s fiction reads ranged from Maus to One of Us is Lying to A Tale of Two Cities.
Sprinkles: So Caramel how about you? Which books of fiction did you enjoy reading most this year, other than those that belong to the series we talked about already?
Caramel: Well, we forgot to talk about The One and Only Ruby and The One and Only Family, both by Katherine Applegate. Those are good books I read and they belong to a series but maybe we can mention them now?
Caramel also read several fun books this year, including One and Only Ruby by Katherine Applegate, Watership Down by Richard Adams, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
Sprinkles: You have also read many nonfiction books this year, right, Caramel?
The bunnies also read a lot of nonfiction this year. Here they are posing with their favorites: Warhammer 40000 Core Book, Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Core Rulebook, Slow Productivity, Guinness World Records 2024, We Should All Be Feminists, and How to Speak Emoji.
Sprinkles: We also all read many books of, or about poetry. Right?
Sprinkles: I also read and reviewed several children’s books about puberty. There were so many and those were all split between girl books and boy books, that I needed to have two reviews for them.
Marshmallow: We read most of those books, too, but I am glad you were the one who ended up reviewing them.
Caramel: I did peek into some of them, but I agree with Marshmallow, that it was good that you were the one who had to review them.
S: But all in all, we all read quite a lot of good, fun, and informative books this year, right?
M: And thought-provoking!
C: Yep. And I think we will be reading a lot more books next year!
M: But first, we have our month off!
S: Yes, we will take the month of January off.
C: And we are all really happy about that!
S: Well, we will continue to read, and we will get back to reviewing them in a month. And till then we just take a short break.
C: We deserve it!
M: Everyone deserves a break. And we are lucky to get one!
S: True. Okay, so what do you want to tell our readers Marshmallow?
M: I want to say: Happy new year everyone! We wish you a happy hoppy new year in 2025!
S: With lots of good books and many friends, old and new!
C: Yes! And stay tuned for more book bunny reviews, coming to you in February 2025!
The book bunnies, and new friend Moose, wish all bunnies around the world a happy hoppy new year in 2025, with lots of good books and many friends, old and new!
About a year ago, Sprinkles reviewed Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, a book showcasing Robert Frost’s famous poem with beautiful illustrations by Susan Jeffers. Since then, she has been collecting poetry books suitable for young bunnies. Caramel reviewed one of those books (This is a Poem That Heals Fish, written originally in French by Jean-Pierre Siméon and illustrated by Olivier Tallec.) just a couple days ago. Today Sprinkles reviews another family favorite, A Child’s Garden of Verses, a beautiful collection of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1885. The edition Sprinkles is talking about was illustrated by Tasha Tudor and first published in 1981.
Sprinkles reviews A Child’s Garden of Verses, a collection of children’s poems written by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Tasha Tudor.
Many know Robert Louis Stevenson as the author of classics like Treasure Island (1883) and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). At the book bunnies household, he is better known as the person who wrote A Child’s Garden of Verses, a beautiful collection of children’s poems that we read out loud together. In the edition we have, there are beautiful and simply elegant illustrations on each page, that only add to the experience of reading these simple but evocative poems out loud.
There are one or two poems displayed on each page, and the illustrator accompanies them with topical imagery that takes us deep into the story unfolding in the poems. For example, the page that displays the poem “Pirate Story” is decorated with images of three children playing pirates. At the top center of the page they are sitting or standing on a makeshift boat in the middle of a garden with a swing, playing pirates. The cattle that show up in the third stanza show up at the bottom of the page as the three children flee with glee.
One of my favorites is the short poem “The Swing” which in only three stanzas of four lines each rhythmically and authentically captures the joy of swinging back and forth on a swing. Here is how it starts:
How do you like to go up on a swing Up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing Ever a child can do? -Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Swing"
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow— Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all. -Robert Louis Stevenson, "My Shadow"
Sprinkles is reading A Child’s Garden of Verses, a collection of children’s poems written by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Tasha Tudor.
A Child’s Garden of Verses collects together sixty four poems. First there are about forty poems, on topics ranging from rain to singing, from travel to bedtime. Then There is a collection of nine poems collected under the heading of “The Child Alone”. Stevenson seems to have been a rather sickly child (he dedicates the whole collection to his childhood nurse Allison Cunningham), and the poems in this section seem to be perhaps more personal than some of the others; you can hear the solitude of a child who had to remain alone and in bed for a lot of time. They are not unhappy poems, but rather, they explore a sick child’s healthy imagination and are quite fun to read. There is then a section titled “Garden Days” containing eight poems about nature and playing outside. Finally a section titled “Envoys” finds poems individually addressing Stevenson’s mother, his friends and other special people. The book ends with a poem addressed “To Any Reader” where the poet reminds us that grownups, like the poet himself, were all children once, and all children today will one day grow up:
As from the house your mother sees you playing round the garden trees, So you may see, if you will look, Through the windows of this book, Another child, far, far away, And in another garden, play. But do not think you can at all, By knocking on the window, call That child to hear you. He intent Is all on his play-business bent. He does not hear; he will not look, Nor yet be lured out of this book. For, long ago, the truth to say, He has grown up and gone away, And it is but a child of air That lingers in the garden there. -Robert Louis Stevenson, "To Any Reader"
As you can see from the examples I have already provided, poems in A Child’s Garden of Verses are mostly in simple poetic forms and simple rhyme. This makes these poems a lot of fun to read out loud with young ones, and their topics, all themes and topics relevant and familiar to young children, make them accessible.
The poems in A Child’s Garden of Verses were written more than 140 years ago and as such are now in public domain. So you can find the whole collection online; see, for example, this page or this page. But we read books not only to access the words from their creator but also to hold on to them in the most visceral way, in a book that can be held, touched, seen, smelled, and shared.
In short, books like A Child’s Garden of Verses can be great opportunities to add more poetry to your family time. I hope you will give this book a try!
Sprinkles encourages all bunnies young and old to read more poetry together; books like A Child’s Garden of Verses, a collection of children’s poems written by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Tasha Tudor, can be great opportunities to add more poetry to your family time.
