April Halprin Wayland

This is a collection of poems of different types. Most of them are free verse, but there is also a sonnet and concrete poetry. All of the poems in the collection are told from the point of view of a teenage girl, probably one in seventh grade. She is in her second year at her current school, but the problems that the speaker voices are a bit too immature for high school. The poems are organized into three sections, "Autumn", "Winter", and "Fall". Taken together, the poetry does a wonderful job of examining the trials of the adolescent girl and conveying the emotional perspective of the speaker. I was especially taken by the poems about the speaker's father, as a father of a daughter. The idolization she imparts on him was profound. I would highly suggest this book to teenage girls, although boys would likely find it a difficult read. The book could also be excerpted for use as model poems in a poetry unit.… (meer)