Lee Bennett Hopkins Award - Button Up!

Schertle, A.  (2009).  Button up! Wrinkled rhymes..  Ill. P. Mathers.  New York, NY:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  ISBN 978-0-15-205050-4.

What would your clothes say if they could talk?  In Alice Schertle’s Button Up: Wrinkled Rhymes, we find out what the clothes of young children would say.  Winner of the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for Poetry in 2010, Button Up personifies pieces of clothing from hats and shoes and bicycle helmets to swimsuits, jammies, and costumes.  Perfect for preschoolers and early elementary children, the sentiments of these pieces of clothing will be understandable and meaningful.  And don’t be surprised if after reading these poems, the young ones ask you what their undies are saying.

            Emily’s Undies

            We’re Emily’s undies

            with laces and bows.

Emily shows us

wherever she goes.

She doesn’t wear diapers,

not even to bed.

Now she wears undies

with ruffles instead.

We’re Emily’s undies,

fit for a queen,

the prettiest undies

that anyone’s seen,

and everyone’s seen

our laces and bows

because Emily shows us

wherever she goes.

The poems in this volume made me think about my own little girls – who are 28 and 29 now – and how excited and proud of their ruffly undies they were to the point of needing to show them to everyone.  So while the little ones will enjoy the rhyming, rhythmic poems, so will the moms and grandmothers who might read the poems to their children and grandchildren. 

Vocabulary in the poems will also provide some new experiences for young children.  Joshua’s jammies don’t fit penguins, bears, or tigers, but neither do they fit iguanas, gnus, or llamas.  The rhymes and rhythms are exceptionally pleasing to the ear, and the repetition of words and phrases provide predictable patterns for young readers.  Many of the poems, as illustrated above in Emily’s Undies begin and end with the same phrases.  After reviewing this book, I’m anxious to read it with Corbyn who is beginning to read fairly well now.  I believe he will find some success in decoding and comprehending the words on these pages by using the word patterns and the context of familiar objects and situations. 

The cover of this book also caught my attention.  From the cutest buttoned-up ostrich on the front to the butterflies that flitter from the front to the back cover, Petra Mathers’s illustrations complete the poems to perfection.  Button Up!  is a wonderful addition to any young children’s class or the collection of books parents have at home.