Grandma Annie’s Poetry

By Ramona L. Hyman

Illustrated by Art Dan

105 Publishing, 2022

Paperback: $12.99 Amazon

Reviewed by Karen Hilgartner

The cover of Grandma Annie's Poetry contains a cartoon illustration of two children sitting on the lap of an older lady. All of them are smiling.

“Poetry is a little like faith. You can’t understand it all the time, but you sure can feel it,” says Grandma Annie. Young readers will move to the rhythm and flow of poetry in author Ramona L. Hyman’s, Grandma Annie’s Poetry, as Blessing, accompanied by her twin brother Billy, describes how her Grandma Annie’s poetry makes them feel. She says that when they sit on the floor with their ears “close to her lips” sometimes her pretty words “pull us right off the floor.” And they feel like dancing when they hear,  

Papa Raymond, the string bean man,

Snaps poetry like beans all over the land.

One word, two words, three words, four,

Snap those poems and come back for more.

Papa Raymond, the string bean man,

got poetry beating all over the land.

Thump, thump dup da dupity da.

Hyman knows that poetry is best taught to young children by allowing them to hear poems read aloud and letting them giggle and move to the sounds they hear in alliteration and rhyme, and having them close their eyes to “view” the imagery created in their minds as they hear the words:

The sky is a huge pillow

that floats in the air.

And when you are asleep,

It floats down to be

The feathery dream beneath your head.

Grandma Annie’s Poetry is a great introduction to poetry, helpful to anyone teaching children to love and appreciate poetry. Hyman dedicated this book to her parents, Annie and Raymond Hyman, who taught her to love poetry, “a charm full of words to carry in your heart.”

Dr. Ramona L. Hyman is a writer, speaker, and Professor of English at Oakwood University in Huntsville. She also serves as a Governor’s appointee for the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

Karen Hilgartner is an Alabama native, raised in a family of oral storytellers. She has spent most of her life teaching the very young how to read, write their own stories, and become immersed in the wonders of the world around them.