The Sea is Calling Me

The Sea is Calling Me, written by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Walter Gaffney-Kessell, is a poetry picture book for kids. This is a book full of the most calming poems I've seen in a while. The images are boring enough, a lot like the style of the Two voices; all ink lines, and no color. The text is almost like a Haiku, but without the three line and syllable rules. This book is very good at finding a voice that describes the sea, nature, and the world's rhythm. I'm not sure what else I could say about these poems, I mean they are good and everything, and are good examples of voice in poetry, but they do seem a little bit boring. I mean, they are pretty, but I do not live by the ocean, and have had only one occasion in my life to see it, so it makes these poems a bit unrelatable, they are ideas and voices that I can only imagine from a faint memory. It could be a cool jumping off point, have kids write poems in that style, but about settings or memories that they are more closely linked to. I suppose one should never overlook the traditional stylings of poetry, I just would want my students exposed to a larger variety of poetry to give them more options.