Troy Thompson's Excellent Poetry Book - Written by Gary Crew and Illustrated by Craig Smith

Troy Thompson's Excellent Poetry Book follows Troy Thompson, a Year 6 student in Ms. Kranke's English class in Dagaburra, Australia. Read his assignments, his work, his teacher's comments, and step into the head of a twelve-year-old Australian boy as he has his first experience with poetry.Moving, silly (and sometimes just a little gross), Troy Thompson's Excellent Peotry Book is more than an introduction to poetry for children. It can be read as a narrative, or used as an easy-to-follow classroom guide for teachers. Divided into assignnments and peppered with Troy's own doodles and margin comments, poetry (or peotry) has never been so much fun.Whether he's dedicating a ballad to his girlfriend Kylie or revealing the heroic and moving death of his policeman father, Ms. Kranke obviously has a great deal of affection for both Troy and his poems - someting readers will understand perfectly.In this painless introduction to poetry -- sorry, peotry -- Aussie sixth-grader Troy Thompson does his best to keep up with Ms. Kranke's assignments on, variously, the haiku, the ballad, the limerick, the sonnet, occasional poems, concrete poetry, the ode and the acrostic. Ms. Kranke's encouraging instructions are juxtaposed to hilarious effect with Troy's scatalogical word lists, wild illustrations and manful efforts to actually write poems. - Washington Post, Aug. 24, 2003 (hardcover)