Love Letters

Author: Arnold Adoff
Illustrator: Lisa Desimini
Title: Love Letters
Publisher: The Blue Sky Press, 1997
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 32
Reading Level (Lexile): 450L

I found this in the Children’s Section of the Library.

Plot Summary: All the poems in this book are written by Arnold Adoff. They are love letters in poetic form celebrated by the amazing artistic ability of Lisa Desimini. Desimini uses pictures, real life objects/dolls, and real pictures to highlight each poem. Adoff adds sweet and loving words between brothers and sisters, kids and parents, students to teachers, and students to each other. The poems are very creative and humorous at times, making the book fun and enjoyable to read.

Love Letters reminded me of giving valentine cards out as a child. Many of the poems reminded me of that feeling you had when you were younger and you liked another student in your class. The book also reminded me of I Spy puzzle books because of the real life pictures and use of real life objects. The use of real life objects creates so much detail, and I found myself spending more time looking at the pictures! The pictures really make the book especially fun and exciting to read. Each page is so different, I found myself looking quickly so I could see what the next page held!

What is nice about Love Letters is that I feel as though you could use this book with younger and older students. Younger students would probably enjoy listening to this book around Valentine’s Day. This book relates to my theme of Friendship because many of the relationships highlighted in these poems is friendship. Many times with younger students, Valentine’s Day is a day to celebrate friendship with your classmates. I think this book would fit in nicely when talking about friendship. Older students could benefit from looking at the forms of the poem, word choice Adoff uses, and how the illustrations help to make the poems special to read. This book could be used as an introduction into writing poetry with upper elementary aged students.