Alma Flor Ada

Cielo abierto Collection of Poetry Anthologies in Spanish

Poetry is one of the best gifts we can give chil­dren. A poem a day enhances a child’s life with the sounds of words, with rhyme and rhythm, with the enchant­ment of images and metaphors, with the invi­ta­tion to see real­ity with new eyes.

Our cul­ture is very rich in out­stand­ing poets and excel­lent poetry. Some poets write pri­mar­ily for chil­dren, but even our most rec­og­nized poets have at some time or other writ­ten poetry that chil­dren can enjoy.

The Cielo abierto Poetry Col­lec­tion is com­posed of seven poetry antholo­gies. These rich antholo­gies include selec­tions from the folk­lore along with the work of the best Spanish-speaking poets from the United States, Latin Amer­ica and Spain. Each of the selec­tions has been care­fully cho­sen to awaken children’s love of poetry and to deepen their appre­ci­a­tion for the musi­cal­ity and rich­ness of the Span­ish lan­guage. Orig­i­nal poems by Alma Flor Ada and Isabel Cam­poy are also included.

It is impos­si­ble to assign a spe­cific age to poetry, since the same poem can be enjoyed by chil­dren of dif­fer­ent ages at dif­fer­ent moments. Yet, there is a cer­tain pro­gres­sion of lan­guage and read­ing dif­fi­culty in the series reflected in the order in which the titles are listed.

Grade lev­els have been men­tioned next to the titles as an ori­en­ta­tion, but should not be seen restrictively.

The titles are:

• Gor­rión, gor­rión [PreK-2] 64 pages
• El verde limón [K-3] 48 pages
• Dulce es la sal [K-3] 48 pages
• La rama azul [2–5] 64 pages
• Nuevo día [2–5] 64 pages
• Huer­tos de coral [5–8] 128 pages
• Ríos de lava [5–12] 128 pages

READERS’ RESPONSES

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