Poetry Friday--Fun Fabulous Finds

Saturday I went to a local used book superstore, I wrote about it briefly here.

There was section labeled vintage, which had books old and yellowed, some more ancient than vintage! One of my vintage finds was a small book of poems for kids entitled The Little Hill: Poems & Pictures by Harry Behn. (I wouldn't dare call this title ancient since it was published the same year I was born, and let's leave the date as "long ago.")

I was absolutely delighted to find this book! I wrote about Behn back in March. I never expected to find a book of his children's poems for sale in my own backyard!

This copy, although a discard from a school library, seems to have been little used. Either that, or, since it was from a Catholic school library, the users lived in fear of divine (or nun) retribution for returning a book marked or damaged! There was even a borrower's record card still in the pocket! And, it had borrower's names until some time after 1978 when names were replaced by numbers.

The poems in the book are each accompanied by a small, all-red illustration. The paper used in The Little Hill is thick and lovely and perfect for the woodblock prints.

I was lucky to find this little treasure of a book with this little treasure of a poem:

Circles

The things to draw with compasses
Are suns and moons and circleses
And rows of humptydumpasses
Or anything in circuses
Like hippopotamusseses
And hoops and camels' humpasses
And wheels on clownses busseses
And fat old elephumpasses.

Do kids today even know what a compass is--besides a potential lethal weapon? Perhaps not, but they'd sure enjoy the hearing this poem read aloud!

Today's other fun fabulous find is all the wonderful poetry links at our Round-Up hostess, Laura Salas's blog, which is now residing at WordPress.