A Full Moon is Rising

I love Marilyn Singer! Her poetry book Mirror, Mirror is one of the most-read books in our classroom. Children are always astounded at how the point of view changes when the lines are reversed.

So, when I saw Marilyn Singer's name on A Full Moon is Rising on the "New Books" bookshelf at my public library, I had to read it. Now that I've read it, I will truly have to have it and buy it for our classroom library!

This collection of poems reminds me a little of Amazing Faces, edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, which I absolutely adored! Both books deal with a single topic, but throughout the book, the topic is looked at through different cultural lenses.

In A Full Moon is Rising, the focus topic is the full moon. On each new set of pages, we look at the full moon from different locations in the world. What I love about this is Singer has chosen some sites that most children might not know, so there is a world map included that highlights all the different locales. In some of these places, the reader even learns about celebrations connected to the full moon. Great learning with accessible text. And if the reader wants to know even more, Singer has included more text in the back of the book about each location, and has also included a section about the different phases of the moon. The nonfiction text and the poetry in this book blend beautifully together to share important knowledge of cultures and of moon facts.

In addition to the fact that I love Singer's poems, one of the topics covered in 5th grade is about the Earth and the moon, including its phases. This will be a great book for my teaching partner to share when she teaches science, but A Full Moon Is Rising will also be a wonderful book for me to share in my language arts classes as an example of wonderful language and good mentor text for literary nonfiction.