Water Music

Water Music
by Jane yolen
Photographs by Jason Stemple

Water Music is a collection of poetry for children, written by Jane Yolen, and inspired by the photography of Jason Stemple.

I enjoyed this book of poetry, all with a "water" theme. Jane Yolen certainly has a poetic way with words, and her poems in this book cover a wide range of styles and different poetic verses. The photography is beautiful, and it is easy to see how these photographs inspired the lyrics in this book.

The last page of this book includes a "note from the author." In this note, Yolen explains that "normally a picture book grows text first and illustrations afterward." She continues to explain that for this book, she "responded poetically to the pictures he gave me." As I read her notes, I immediately thought that this would be a great book to share, along with her author's notes, with a class when encouraging students to explore poetry in their writing. I can imagine an activity where students gather their own photographs, or look through provided photographs, and begin to write their own poetic verse.