“During Zach and Nate's high school home school years, we used this series of books to have some poetry in our day. Each month we chose a new author from the series. We read aloud from the books along with our breakfast. Each morning we read a few paragraphs from the biography, then we each read one page straight though the book. Of course, we would finish the book before the month was up, and then each person was able to choose any poem from the book to read. Some favorites we even memorized.
The series uses tremendous artwork to illustrate the poems. The artist is chosen specifically for the poet. Each book's artwork perfectly compliments the poems contained in the volume. Since my sons are artists, the different styles of drawing were something they enjoyed -- sometimes more than the different styles of writing.
I learned much about poetry, and read many poets that I had never really looked at closely before. The presentation of the books is appealing to all ages. The series does an excellent job of making literary poetry accessible for everyone. Once we read these books as an introduction, some of these poets proved to be just too seductive to us -- and we had to find more. ”