This collection of twenty-two poems explores the fascinating lives of North American nocturnal animals. When the sun goes down, many animals come out. Crickets chirp their crickety song hoping to attract a mate. Cougars bury their leftovers for later, leaving few clues for others to follow. Armadillos emerge from their dens to dig for worms, leaving holes in the lawns they disturb.

Existing in myriad forms, containing multitudes in its reflection, and coursing through each and every one of us, water sustains the world around us--and life itself.

Everything Comes Next is a treasure chest of Naomi Shihab Nye's most beloved poems. From favorites such as "Famous" and "A Valentine for Ernest Mann," to the widely shared "Kindness" and "Gate A-4," this collection celebrates her term as Young People's Poet Laureate.

Through the eyes of 10-year-old Benjamin Giroux, being odd is different, and different is a good thing. This is what the then fifth-grader hoped to convey in his poem, beginning every few sentences with "I am," about what it is like to live with autism.

An illustrated, whimsical, kid-friendly anthology of approximately seventy-five Star Wars-themed poems. In "My Pet AT-AT," a ten-year-old dreams of playing hide and seek and fetch with an AT-AT. In "Dad's Luke Skywalker Figurine," a child opens their dad's untouched action figure but, instead of getting into trouble, helps their dad re-discover his own sense of play. In "T-16 Dreams," a little girl imagines herself flying through the galaxy, the Empire hot on her trail, to help with her real-world fear of flying.

After Kiyoshi watches his grandfather, Eto, compose his delicate haiku, he wonders out loud: 'Where do poems come from?' His grandfather answers by taking him on a walk through their city, where they see a cat perched on a hill of oranges; hear the fluttering of wings; imagine what's behind a tall wall; and discuss their walk, with each incident inspiring a wonderful new haiku from Eto. As Kiyoshi discovers that poems come from the way the world outside of us meets the world within each of us, he also finds the courage to write a haiku of his own.

Mother Goose takes a trip to India in this unique collection of nursery rhymes with a distinctly Indian flair. This little sooar (pig) goes to the bazaar. Little Miss Muffet eats dahi (yogurt) until a makadee (spider) scares her away. Little Jack Horner eats Diwali sweets.

A poetry collection that both illustrates what mindfulness is and encourages young, growing minds to be present. In My Thoughts Are Clouds uses poetry to demonstrate what mindfulness is and gives kids--and their parents and teachers--accessible ways to learn mindfulness tools.

The poem addresses a young boy getting his first passport, taking the boy - and the reader - on a journey through a series of countries around the globe.

Packed with silly rhymes and witty wordplay, A.F. Harrold's poetry is positively bursting with fun--and advice. But it's not always the most useful. . . Never apologize to a door you've walked into, unless it's a really special door. Don't serve a cat soup when the cat wants jelly. Tomato soup won't fill a feline belly. Don't put a rock in a roll, unless you hate having teeth.

15 fun and fact-filled poems about soil--what makes it and who lives in it! This book unearths some of the glorious mysteries that lie beneath our feet!

There's no doubt about it--plastic is in almost everything. From our phones and computers to our toys and utensils, plastic is everywhere. But the amount of plastic we throw away is hurting the health of our planet. With The Last Straw: Kids vs. Plastics, readers will learn about the growing plastic problem and meet just a few of the young activists who are standing up and speaking out for change. You'll hear about the "Be Straw Free" campaign, started by nine-year-old Milo Cress. You'll discover how scientists are using jellyfish snot and munching, crunching caterpillars to break down plastic pollution faster. You'll meet Xóchitl Guadalupe Cruz López, the eight-year-old girl turning old plastic bottles into solar heaters. And there are many more incredible kids here, not much older than our readers, who will inspire us all to change the way we think about plastic!

This poetry collection introduces readers to the art of found poetry as the poet writes a 37-line poem, "Nest," then finds 160 smaller poems within it. What can you find in a poem about a robin's nest?

This memoir-in-verse tells the moving story of how a nation learned to celebrate a hero. Through years of protests and petition, Kathlyn's story highlights the foot soldiers who fought to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.

In stunning verse and vivid use of white space, Erica Martin's debut poetry collection walks readers through the Civil Rights Movement-from the well-documented events that shaped the nation's treatment of Black people, beginning with the "Separate but Equal" ruling-and introduces lesser-known figures and moments that were just as crucial to the Movement and our nation's centuries-long fight for justice and equality.

A captivating coming-of-age middle grade novel in verse about seventh grader Aafiyah Qamar, a Pakistani American girl who hatches a special plan to help her family but finds that doing what's right isn't always easy. Seventh grader Aafiyah loves playing tennis, reading Weird but True facts, and hanging out with her best friend, Zaina. However, Aafiyah has a bad habit that troubles her--she's drawn to pretty things and can't help but occasionally "borrow" them. But when her father is falsely accused of a crime he hasn't committed and gets taken in by authorities, Aafiyah knows she needs to do something to help. When she brainstorms a way to bring her father back, she turns to her Weird but True facts and devises the perfect plan. But what if her plan means giving in to her bad habit, the one she's been trying to stop? Aafiyah wants to reunite her family but finds that maybe her plan isn't so perfect after all. . . "

Nine-year-old Betita knows she is a crane. Papi has told her the story, even before her family fled to Los Angeles to seek refuge from cartel wars in Mexico. The Aztecs came from a place called Aztlan, what is now the Southwest US, called the land of the cranes. They left Aztlan to establish their great city in the center of the universe-Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. It was prophesized that their people would one day return to live among the cranes in their promised land. Papi tells Betita that they are cranes that have come home. Then one day, Betita's beloved father is arrested by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported to Mexico. Betita and her pregnant mother are left behind on their own, but soon they too are detained and must learn to survive in a family detention camp outside of Los Angeles. Even in cruel and inhumane conditions, Betita finds heart in her own poetry and in the community she and her mother find in the camp. The voices of her fellow asylum seekers fly above the hatred keeping them caged, but each day threatens to tear them down lower than they ever thought they could be. Will Betita and her family ever be whole again?

For centuries, accomplished women--of all races--have fallen out of the historical records. The same is true for gifted, prolific, women poets of the Harlem Renaissance who are little known, especially as compared to their male counterparts. In this poetry collection, bestselling author Nikki Grimes uses "The Golden Shovel" poetic method to create wholly original poems based on the works of these groundbreaking women-and to introduce readers to their work. Each poem is paired with one-of-a-kind art from today's most exciting female African-American illustrators: Vanessa Brantley-Newton, Cozbi A. Cabrera, Nina Crews, Pat Cummings, Laura Freeman, Jan Spivey Gilchrist, Ebony Glenn, April Harrison, Vashti Harrison, Ekua Holmes, Cathy Ann Johnson, Keisha Morris, Daria Peoples-Riley, Andrea Pippins, Erin Robinson, Shadra Strickland, Nicole Tadgell, and Elizabeth Zunon.

On September 11, 1973, a military coup plunged Chile into seventeen long years of dictatorial rule. Only the return of democracy could reveal the full horrors of Augusto Pinochet's regime: 3,197 people dead or disappeared--including thirty-four children under the age of fourteen.

When a teacher asks her class what one thing they would save in an emergency, some students know the answer right away. Others come to their decisions more slowly. And some change their minds when they hear their classmates' responses. A lively dialog ignites as the students discover unexpected facets of one another--and themselves.

Malian loves spending time with her grandparents at their home on a Wabanaki reservation. She's there for a visit when, suddenly, all travel shuts down. There's a new virus making people sick, and Malian will have to stay with her grandparents for the duration. Everyone is worried about the pandemic, but Malian knows how to keep her family and community safe: She protects her grandparents, and they protect her. She doesn't go outside to play with friends, she helps her grandparents use video chat, and she listens to and learns from their stories. And when Malsum, one of the dogs living on the rez, shows up at their door, Malian's family knows that he'll protect them too.

\Woke: A Young Poet's Guide to Justice is a collection of poems to inspire kids to stay woke and become a new generation of activists. Historically poets have been on the forefront of social movements. Woke is a collection of poems by women that reflects the joy and passion in the fight for social justice, tackling topics from discrimination to empathy, and acceptance to speaking out.

Twelve-year-old Collin has a plan to survive any worst-case scenario. Avalanche? No problem. Riptide? Stay calm. He's 100% prepared for every disaster...except maybe his home life. Collin is always prepared for something to go wrong. Ever since he lost his mom in a car accident, he's been journaling about how to overcome things like avalanches, riptides, or even a bad case of halitosis. Meanwhile, Collin's father grows more distant by the day, and has started hoarding things throughout their house. Determined to hide his home life from his friends, Collin navigates middle school alongside the hilarious and clueless Liam, and Georgia, who Collin may have feelings for. Can Collin learn to be vulnerable around those he loves, even when he can't control every possible scenario?

A smash-up of art and text for teens that viscerally captures what it is to be Black. In America. Right Now.

I am not who I say I am, and Marla isn't who she thinks she is. I am a girl trying to forget. She is a woman trying to remember. Allison has run away from home and with nowhere to live finds herself hiding out in the shed of what she thinks is an abandoned house. But the house isn't empty. An elderly woman named Marla, with dementia, lives there - and she mistakes Allison for an old friend from her past named Toffee. Allison is used to hiding who she really is, and trying to be what other people want her to be. And so, Toffee is who she becomes. After all, it means she has a place to stay. There are worse places she could be. But as their bond grows, and Allison discovers how much Marla needs a real friend, she begins to ask herself - where is home? What is a family? And most importantly, who is she, really?

Michael is a mixed-race gay teen growing up in London. All his life, he's navigated what it means to be Greek-Cypriot and Jamaican--but never quite feeling Greek or Black enough. As he gets older, Michael's coming out is only the start of learning who he is and where he fits in. When he discovers the Drag Society, he finally finds where he belongs--and the Black Flamingo is born.

Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, this collection captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage.

Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people... In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal's office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash. Separated by distance--and Papi's secrets--the two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered. And then, when it seems like they've lost everything of their father, they learn of each other.

Candice Iloh's book tells the story of Ada-daughter of an immigrant father and an African American mother-and her struggle to find a place for herself in America and in her own family.

Nima wishes she were someone else. She doesn't feel understood by her mother, who grew up in a different land. She doesn't feel accepted in her suburban town; yet somehow, she isn't different enough to belong elsewhere. Her best friend, Haitham, is the only person with whom she can truly be herself. Until she can't, and suddenly her only refuge is gone.   As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen--the name her parents meant to give her at birth--Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might be more real than Nima knows.  And the life Nima wishes were someone else's. . . is one she will need to fight for with a fierceness she never knew she possessed.  

An exploration of one of the darkest moments in our history, when American troops killed four American students protesting the Vietnam War. May 4, 1970. Kent State University. As protestors roil the campus, National Guardsmen are called in. In the chaos of what happens next, shots are fired and four students are killed. To this day, there is still argument of what happened and why.

Me (Moth) is about a teen girl who is grieving the deaths of her family, and a teen boy who crosses her path. Moth has lost her family in an accident. Though she lives with her aunt, she feels alone and uprooted. Until she meets Sani, a boy who is also searching for his roots. If he knows more about where he comes from, maybe he'll be able to understand his ongoing depression. And if Moth can help him feel grounded, then perhaps she too will discover the history she carries in her bones. Moth and Sani take a road trip that has them chasing ghosts and searching for ancestors.

For seventeen-year-old Denver, music is everything. Writing, performing, and her ultimate goal: escaping her very small, very white hometown. So Denver is more than ready on the day she and her best friends Dali and Shak sing their way into the orbit of the biggest R&B star in the world, Sean "Mercury" Ellis. Merc gives them everything: parties, perks, wild nights -- plus hours and hours in the recording studio. Even the painful sacrifices and the lies the girls have to tell are all worth it. Until they're not. Denver begins to realize that she's trapped in Merc's world, struggling to hold on to her own voice. As the dream turns into a nightmare, she must make a choice: lose her big break, or get broken.

Seventeen-year-old Cordelia Koenig intended to breeze through her senior project. While her peers stressed, Cordelia planned to use the same trace-your-roots genealogy idea her older sister used years prior. And getting partnered with her longtime crush, Kodiak Jones, is icing on the cake. All she needs to do is mail in her DNA sample, write about her ancestry results, and get that easy A. But when Cordelia's GeneQuest results reveal that her father is not the person she thought he was, but a stranger who lives thousands of miles away, her entire world shatters. Now she isn't sure of anything--not the mother who lied, the man she calls Dad, or the girl staring back at her in the mirror. If your life began with a lie, how can you ever be sure of what's true

When Darius told Angel he loved her, she believed him. But five weeks after the incident, Angel finds herself in Brooklyn, far from her family, from him, and from the California life she has known.   Angel feels out of sync with her new neighborhood. At school, she can't shake the feeling everyone knows what happened--and that it was her fault. The only place that makes sense is Ms. G's class. There, Angel's classmates share their own stories of pain, joy, and fortitude. And as Angel becomes immersed in her revolutionary literature course, the words from Black writers like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Zora NEale Hurston speak to her and begin to heal the wounds of her past.

Poems to Turn to Again and Again - from Amanda Gorman, Sharon Olds, Kate Baer, and More   Created and compiled just for young women, You Don't Have to Be Everything is filled with works by a wide range of poets who are honest, unafraid, and skilled at addressing the complex feelings of coming-of-age, from loneliness to joy, longing to solace, attitude to humor. These unintimidating poems offer girls a message of self-acceptance and strength, giving them permission to let go of shame and perfectionism.

READ more than 50 remarkable poems and songs!

HEAR poetry rhymes and rhythms from Queen Latifah to Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes to A Tribe Called Quest and more! * Also hear part of Martin Luther Kind''s original "I Have a Dream" speech, followed by the remarkable live performance of the speech by Nikki Giovanni, Oni Lasana and Val Gray Ward. * Hip Hop Speaks to Children CD contains more than 30 performances, either by the artists who created them, or as unique interpretations by admiring poets and artists.

DISCOVER Langston Hughes''s elegant gospel "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," A Tribe Called Quest''s playful "Ham ''N'' Eggs," Sterling A. Brown''s hard-luck "Long Track Blues," Gwendolyn Brooks''s wake-up call "We Real Cool," Kanye West''s lovely "Hey Mama," and Martin Luther King Jr.''s awe-inspiring "I Have a Dream."