Poetry for Children- The Llama Who Had No Pajama

The Llama Who Had No Pajama

By Mary Ann Hoberman

Illustrated by Betty Fraser

ISBN: 978-0-15-205571-4

Each week I try to select a book that I not only want to take out from my local library, but one that I want to purchase and keep in my own personal library, and to use professionally with students in the future.  I am confident that the selection I made for this week's assignment is one that I will use time and time again as a teacher.

I chose The Llama Who Had No Pajama by Mary Ann Hoberman because I found the collection of poems entertaining and engaging.  I think that poetry can be a wonderful genre to share and explore with students, but that you must be careful in the selection and approach you take so that the children in your class grow up as poetry fans.   The poems in The Llama Who Had No Pajama will definitely appeal to students with topics such as cockroaches, frogs, worms, and everyday items such as windshield wipers; everyday items, animals and ideas. 

The other component that I liked about this collection of poetry was the artwork by Betty Fraser.  The colors are not bright, and the images are not extremely detailed, but they accompany the text very well, and are position around the poems themselves, making the images even more apart of the written words.

The Llama Who Had No Pajama is the winner of the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, as well as other accolades, and it easy to see why; the poems are wonderfully written.

My favorite poems in the story are those about sea life such as "Whale", "Way Deep Down", "A Thought" and "Fish"... the subject matter of sea life fascinates me, the illustration that accompanies these poems is beautiful, and the adjectives and flow of these poems grabbed my interest.

There are far too many poems in this book to share with students in one sitting, a hundred poems actually.  I think it would be best to share only a single poem at a time and really enjoy and digest each individual poem.  There is so much that can be done with poetry, and it would be great to use book to show children poems about nature and everyday and then take a trip to a local park and have students create their own poems about things they see there- trees, insects, people, etc.