Great book with great information with well done illustrations. I enjoyed this book and found it interesting. It is a helpful book when it comes to poetry.

Connor and Clara Build a Concrete Poem is part of the Poetry Builders Series to teach kids about all sorts of poetry types. This one, by Megan Atwood, focuses on concrete poems. Concrete poems, also known as shape poems, take the shape of their topic. Clara is collecting autumn leaves when her friend Connor says he can give her the best leaf ever- a word leaf! Clara isn't impressed at first, but when Connor reads the shape poem out, Clara wants to try. Together they make a mountain shaped poem about climbing. Then they each write their own poem, which turn out to complement each other nicely.

My cubs and I read this together. The artwork is just lovely. I feel it did a good job teaching kids the basics of shape poems. Even though I'm a poet myself, I have never tried this form. I didn't particularly care for it due to the space required, but several of my cubs really took to it. I think it’s a great early intermediate form though. The end of the book has more detailed instructions regarding this form. Highly recommended for any teacher with a poetic bent. A must for all school libraries.

***Many thanks to Netgalley and Norwood Press for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This is a great series to use during a poetry unit! In this one, the poetic form discussed is the concrete poem, one of my students' favorites.

My daughter thoroughly enjoyed this book, and read it more than once. After reading it, she wrote her own concrete poems.

Connor and Clara Build a Concrete Poem
by Megan Atwood
Norwood House Press


Children's Fiction , Poetry
Pub Date 01 Jul 2011


I am reviewing a copy of Connor and Clara Build a Concrete Poem through Norwood House Press and Netgalley:

It's an Autumn day when two friends are playing together and one decides to teach the other how to write Concrete Poem. A poem that literally takes the shape of the subject the poem is about.

This book would be great for use in a classroom setting or just for a child who is interested in learning about poetry.

I give Connor and Clara Build A Concrete Poem five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!

In a very child-friendly narrative, two kids gather in a park and make up concrete poems, both together and apart. By the end of the simple story the reader will have had all the basics they need, and met with easy instruction to do the same. It's a great primer for the young poet, with technical terms in bold ready for the end glossary, and it certainly isn't the typical thing, I would have thought, to have got the young child interested in what was after all a '60s, post-modern style of creation. Still, smarter word processing must make it easier these days to print your own. It's a shame that of the three Internet resources listed, two don't seem to exist any more, but the book is pretty much all you need.