Whether You Like it or Not; Weather an Anthology

Created by: Missi Radday

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 Table of Contents:

“Whether the Weather be Fine” Anonymous (pg. 5)

“Mister Sun” J. Patrick Lewis from the book Weather (pg. 5)

“Rain Clouds” Elizabeth-Ellen Long from the book Random House Book of Poetry for Children
(pg. 6)

“Spring Rain” Buson from the book A Kick in the Head (pg. 6)

“To Walk in Warm Rain” David McCord (pg. 6)

“Rhyme” Elizabeth Coatsworth from the book Random House Book of Poetry for Children (pg.
7)

“Twelfth Song of Thunder” the Navajo tradition (pg. 7)

“Rain, rain go away” Unknown (pg. 8)

“The Rain Has Silver Sandals” May Justus from the book Random House Book of Poetry for
Children (pg. 8)

“Fog” Carl Sandburg (pg. 9)

“First Snow” Mary Louise Allen (pg. 9)

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” Robert Frost (pg. 10)

“The More It Snows” also known as “Tiddely Pom” A.A. Milne from the book Random House
Book of Poetry for Children (pg. 10)

“When All the World Is Full of Snow” N.M. Bodecker (pg. 11)

“February’s Mood” Lenore Hetrick (pg.12)

“The Wind” Hilda Boswell (pg. 12)

“Windy Nights” Robert Louis Stevenson (pg. 13)

“Tornado!” Carole Gerber (pg. 13)

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Introductory Note:

I chose these eighteen poems because they contained some or all of what I think are essential

qualities of a good poem for children. Those seven qualities are: descriptive language,

personification, story telling, rhyming or song-like characteristics, attention grabbing, clear focus

and imagery. First off, what I mean by descriptive language is the author doesn’t say “the storm

was big,” rather it “roars” at their house like in Elizabeth Coatsworth’s poem. This brings me to

my next quality which is personification. A good children’s poem brings inanimate objects to

life, which it turn brings the story it is telling to life. For example, in the poem The Rain has

Silver Sandals, the rain is “wearing sandals to “dance” in the spring. Going off of that quality, in

my opinion, a majority of children’s literature contains a story and if there is no story or reason

behind reading the material, in this case, the poem then students will be uninterested. The next

quality you will hear often and read often just due to popularity. Rhyming is a fun aspect of

poetry that prepares students brains for what might come next as well as produces a song-like

sound in your head while reading it, which is useful when working with students because music

tends to appeal to young students. The next quality is attention grabbing, you want the poems

you’re reading to grab and keep the students attention. I’ve found that poems can do that by

including many of these qualities listed above. The second to last quality is a clear focus.

Especially as far as these poems are concerned they stick to one subject or idea and aren’t meant

to confuse you or provide some immense deeper meaning because that wouldn’t be appropriate

for a good children’s poem, emphasis on the children. The final quality is imagery, which goes

back to the vocabulary used in the text. The more descriptive you are the better picture it paints

in reader’s heads.

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 All of that being said, one poem in my anthology sticks out to me. The poem is When All the

World is Full of Snow by N.M. Bodecker. This poem has descriptive language, personification,

story telling, rhyming, clear focus, imagery and grabs your attention. The qualities that are most

powerful and do the best job delivering an awesome poem are the descriptive language, imagery,

rhyming, and its ability to catch your attention. Some descriptive language Bodecker used also

served as personification such as “swarming frost flakes” and “swirling stillness.” The language

along with the personification create an image in our mind of a world full of snow. The next

quality is its rhyme, which doesn’t occur every line, but words like know and snow or wait and

gate do, which creates a nice back and forth feeling as you read. Lastly, this poems qualities and

the text itself is attention grabbing. From the very first lines where the writer doesn’t know

where to go, as a reader were thinking “why?” or “I wonder where he might go.” Overall I really

enjoyed reading this poem and will definitely be including it and many others from this

anthology in my future classroom.

I collected these particular poems because they all were of interest to me. With the

changing weather now and always in our strange state of Virginia I’ve always been interested in

weather. There is a poem for almost every topic out there and luckily there were many about the

different types of weather.

I sorted them by type of weather. The order in which I arranged the poems in the

anthology was based off my belief that the anthology should start off on a positive note and

transition into more serious, and dreary weather because if I started with a poem about a storm, it

wouldn’t necessarily catch my attention and make me want to continue reading whereas a broad

poem about weather followed by one about the sun being personified will hopefully interest my

readers. I concluded with the tornado solely to end boldly and it seemed like the best fit.

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 Bibliography
Janeczko, Paul B., and Christopher Raschka. A kick in the head: an everyday guide to poetic forms.

Candlewick, 2009.

selected and introduced by Jack Prelutsky ; illustrated by Arnold Lobel. The Random House Book of

Poetry for Children. New York :Random House, 1983. Print.

Farndon, John, et al. Weather. DK Publishing, 2017.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. A Child's Garden of Verses: Selected Poems. 1913.

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