BLESS THE EARTH: A COLLECTION OF POETRY FOR CHILDREN TO CELEBRATE AND CARE FOR OUR WORLD, edited by June Cotner and Nancy Tupper Ling

​Bless The Earth: A Collection of Poetry for Children to Celebrate and Care for Our World (Convergent, 2024), edited by June Cotner and Nancy Tupper Ling and illustrated by Keum Jin Song, is a book you will want to keep tableside, bedside, or anywhere you can page through again and again!
 
Filled with original poems, as well as some classics, it encourages readers to celebrate the beauty, the miracle, and even the fragility of this world. The artwork dances lightly around each poem, giving it space, until every so often a full-page spread takes your breath away. One of those spreads showcases 24 Carrot co-founder Amanda Smith’s own poem “Wonder” – a poem in which she asks:

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                                                                         Have you seen it?
                                                                         Can you believe?
                                                                         The big and the small?

​​And that is the thing about this thoughtful poetry collection. It spotlights the tiniest amazing things, right alongside those most enormous. The land and sea and sky, creatures of all kinds, and also our part in it all. The final section entitled “Caring for our World” is the perfect way to end – a hopeful, inspiring culmination of a most beautiful book.
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On Writing: 

​Poetry is always a wise writing teacher. This collection is a lovely one to study for word choice, imagery, sensory language and more. There are poems about bees and butterflies, the moon and the stars, forests, the sea, the seasons, and more. And every poem, even those that touch upon similar topics, is unique in its form or style or voice.  Poetry helps us see things in a new way – and these particular poems just might help you find new words to describe the world around you.

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To learn more about the editors of this book visit June at https://www.junecotner.com/booklist.php and Nancy at ​https://www.nancytupperling.com/www.nancytupperling.com/.

​To purchase a copy of the book for yourself click here.