Poetry Collections that WOW! A deep-dive chat with my poet friend, Dr. Colleen Kelley

Hello, readers! Today, a treat for the poetic among us.

I first met Dr. Colleen Kelley many years ago at an SCBWI conference. Unlike me (a dabbler, at best), Colleen is a serious student of poetry. We’re currently in a picture book study group together (via Zoom), and if we’re discussing a rhyming book or poetry collection, Colleen always (always) has insights that didn’t even occur to me. So I thought it might be fun to chat with her about her favorites among recently published collections. She has also been kind enough to offer us mini-reviews!

Jill:  Hi, Colleen! Thanks so much for agreeing to this. Readers, I asked Colleen to pick five different poetry collection themes, then tell us which, within those themes, are her recent favorites, and why. So, Colleen, which five themes did you pick? *drumroll*

Colleen:  Hi, Jill! Thanks so much for asking me. Only five themes…that’s so difficult! But when I think about poetry collections I’ve enjoyed most recently, I guess I would first choose the natural geography of our planet—things like mountains, deserts, caves, rivers, waterfalls; second, the trees and plants that add so much greenery to all that impressive topography. Third: weather and outer space. Numbers four and five, always favorites with kids: wild animals and pets. 

And as we know, these are arbitrary divisions because, not only are these themes related, but a few of these books mix themes to some extent. 

Beyond these examples, there is so much other good poetry being published these days. And, in addition to these themes, I like poetry that inspires, poems that make me laugh, poetry about feelings, good-night poems, poems for the very young, poems about how to write poems…

Jill: That’s one thing I love about poetry collections. There’s something out there for everybody. (And if there isn’t, get busy, writers, and fill! that! niche!) So, within your themes, which were your favorite books? (Note to readers: Scroll down for publishing info on all books referenced.)

Colleen:  A couple of my recent favorites with a natural geography theme are Awesome Earth: Concrete Poems Celebrate Caves, Canyons, and other Fascinating Landforms and A Universe of Rainbows: Multicolored Poems for a Multicolored World. 

Awesome Earth may be my all-time favorite book of concrete poems. I love the way these poems about landforms are integrated with colorful landform illustrations. A poem superimposed on an erupting volcano begins, “Once I begin to blow my top, I just can’t stop…” and words shaped to echo a mountain-shaped glacier: “A mountain of ice, I do not race…I chisel forward, sometimes leaving in my wake…A GLACIAL LAKE.” 

If you love color and rainbows as much as I do, A Universe of Rainbows delivers. Each two-page spread reveals the stunning variety of natural rainbows found on our planet, from full-circle rainbows viewed from above by pilots to “The Mountain of Seven Colors” in the Peruvian Andes. (Hello Pilot!: “…I am your optical escort,/born of water, clouds, sun—/a miracle of deflection,/I encircle your reflection…”). A few of these rainbows belong to “dangerous” (peacock mantis shrimp) or “pesty” (fruit fly) creatures. Each poem has a different structure and a sidebar packed with fascinating information.

For trees and green, I would say The Pine Cone’s Secret, Leafy Landmarks, and Dear Acorn (Love, Oak), as well as The City Sings Green. 

Through a series of metaphorical rhyming poems (“A pine tree is a blanket./When the temperature drops and the animals rest,/Its needles and cones make a soft quilted nest…”), The Pine Cone’s Secret describes ways pine trees provide for our world (a haven, a feast, a home, a Christmas celebration…). The book includes illustrated, useful back matter in a kid-friendly format.

Leafy Landmarks documents “trees with a pedigree” as the writer travels across the United States: “…in search of sights TREE-mendous…trees superlative in height and size and age; others famous for their role on history’s grand stage.” A variety of poetry forms—detailed at the front of the book—describe each memorable tree with a poem, name, location, species, fascinating facts, and background information. (Lofty Titans: “Crowns in the clouds, these lofty Titans tower above their arbor friends. Some taller than Lady Liberty, they extend…”) Attractive illustrations serve as a unique background for each tree.

Dear Acorn (Love, Oak) pairs charming epistolary poems on a variety of topics. The first missives in the book are between an oak and an acorn. Next, the nature theme broadens (bubble/sky, cloud/droplets, pebble/river), then branches off into brick/school and other topics, and finally returns to sea turtles/ocean. (“Dear Acorn, …Your whole life ahead of you/and weeks till you fall… Dear Oak, …I’ll be your friend. The one who rises up beside you.”)

The City Sings Green explores completed “creative solutions” in eleven cities around the world that “stop extinction and make cities more livable for wildlife” and us. The motivation, process, and impact of each inventive project is described in verse and text with colorful illustrations. (For the Bees: “…Now stopping atop a tall building,/ honey makers check in/to a bee hotel/with a bee buffet/where open-faced sunflowers sway…” In Our Schoolyard: “…we removed the blacktop/planted oak, poppy, sage…In this oasis that we made, we watched them arrive—hummingbirds, bees, butterflies…”).

For weather and climate: Wind is a Dance, Windsongs, I am Gravity, and A Planet is a Poem. 

In Wind Is a Dance, eight kinds of wind are embodied through short metaphorical poems and soft art. Wind is an excited puppy “barging in fast and strong” (a gale); wind is a train “rumbling straight down the track” (derecho). Short inserts on each spread and more detailed back matter supplement our understanding. 

Windsongs poems are about weather, and they include topics like hurricanes and hail, as well as weather instruments and climate change. The poems are whimsical (“The fog is just a cloud that’s lost…”), informative (“The atmosphere that fills our sky/is only sixty miles high…”), and fun (“…And do I love/the dew, the dew?/It’s true!/I dew!/I dew! I dew!”) with easy-to-understand back matter.

In I Am Gravity, gravity tells its own story. Using an average of only a couple of lines per page, it integrates the lyrical and the scientific in a fluid blend of imagery and important, useful facts (“I gather hydrogen clouds…I squeeze so fiercely that hydrogen can fuse into helium, forging stars…Far-flung lamps twinkle in the night sky.”) The illustrator conveys the vastness of black outer space and skies while infusing celestial objects with an amazing luminosity, and whimsically adds wildlife and humans into the mix.

Wild animals: In the Desert, Zoobilations, and Haiku Ew! But I want to put a word in here for two wonderful wild animal collections, one larger: Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright! and one a little older: National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry.

In the Desert matches beautifully rendered illustrations of the Sahara Desert and its inhabitants with masterfully crafted poems—some longer: The Nubian Vulture: “Red of face/and black of wing/you descend/and we recall/that everything/must have its end…” and some shorter: The Desert Hedgehog: “Yikes!/Spikes!” I also like the humor, and the simple back matter explanations.

Zoobilations! Each poem, with playful childlike art and rhyming animal facts, concludes with a humorous twist often worthy of a chortle, a guffaw, or a groan. Giraffe: “…I hold my head/high in the sky./It’s halfway to the moon./And eat the leaves/of tallest trees/most all giraffe-ternoon.”

Haiku Ew! These haikus describe things we see in nature—a flamingo, honey, glowworms—then reveal their less obvious “icky” side involving poop, farts, barf, and snot. “Lush, sun-gold honey…It’s really bee barf.” The how and why of this disillusionment are clearly explained.

And, last but definitely not least, Pets: Best in Show, Cows and Sheep and Chicks That Peep, The Smell of Wet Dog, and Bless Our Pets.

The bespoke structure of each poem and illustration in Best in Show is tailored to capture the essence and characteristics of 18 very different breeds of dog. The poems entertain, inform, and amuse with added-value sidebars. One of the shortest poems in the book, “The Bloodhound,” sits atop the pictured Bloodhound’s nose: “No nose knows what your nose knows.” 

Cows and Sheep and Chicks that Cheep collects fun, and sometimes zany, illustrated poems of farm animals and farm topics with ending lines like: “And goats all day/bleat naaay, naaay, naaay/inside their naaay-borhood,” and “…corn that grows in rows a-maize-ing.”

While Best in Show focuses on precise descriptions of individual breeds, The Smell of Wet Dog isn’t concerned with breed or best—its focus is on the point-of-view of the everyday dog: “I would be your shadow…/If you let me…/I would follow you…And you could pet me.” and the everyday dog owner: “…Sometimes I am her pillow/when she sleeps on my head.”

In Bless Our Pets, owners offer sweet words to their pets, celebrating or remembering joyful times they have shared with these adorably illustrated animals. Goldfish: “…We grow together, my blessed golden one. You fan the water. I fan the air. We dance a prayer.”

Jill:  Wow. These authors … some heavy hitters on this list! Why do you think these titles stood out to you? What is it about a collection of poetry that first speaks to you?

Colleen:  Well, of course, the title and cover speak to me first. But if the words “poem,” ”poems,” or “poetry” appear there, that’s enough to get me to look inside. Once I’m in, I kind of shop around for something that attracts me—or doesn’t. It’s like meeting someone new. There’s that first impression. But then, I’ll read several poems—or at least a few lines from several poems. I’m shopping, grazing, until I find something that smells interesting or tastes delicious. 

Jill: “Tastes delicious.” Love that, Colleen.

Colleen: I’m looking, first of all, for a feeling of connection. It could be an attraction to, or delight in, the message, or a feeling of admiration for the way the poem has been crafted. Either the poet has written something in a way I had never thought of before or that I hadn’t articulated before, that either helps me clarify that feeling or thought or experience, or it helps me to see it in a new and often delightful way, or expresses it in a way that is entertaining or memorable. I’m attracted to a poem for many reasons, but the bottom line is that it has to connect with me in some way—to attract me to it, and then it should be crafted well, have an element of surprise or uniqueness, and fulfill the promise of the first line.

As far as a collection, I like consistency in quality and theme, and variety in structure and vocabulary. I want to want to read it again and again–hopefully, taking something away each time, even if it’s just pleasure in reading it. So, connection, consistency but not repetition, and a classic aspect that makes me want to return to it.

Jill: You’re making me feel like going off to a corner and working on a poem….

Colleen: A happy marriage of subject and form attracts me to a poem. I like to savor not only the words, the cadence, the structure, and the sounds of a poem—the music—but also any “twist” or surprise element—the unexpected.

I like poems that tell me about things I didn’t know before, and also those that help me know how to live in a better way in our world or learn how others are doing that…animal underpasses or overpasses, helping turtles to the ocean, cleaning up the ocean, etc. And then poems that, as I’ve mentioned, can either say something in a memorable way that I hadn’t heard before, or that inspire, comfort, delight, inform, or make me laugh. And poems that makes me laugh, whether because they are silly in a way that appeals to my sense of humor or because they’re clever in the way they use words and images. And I really enjoy a good metaphor, similes, or turn of phrase of any kind, as well as personification.

Jill:  Amen! And isn’t it amazing that books can fall into our souls to accomplish all those things? You’ve mentioned a recent uptick on titles published, which is heartening news to the poets among us. What’s the most unusual collection of poems you’ve seen recently––for instance, a theme you’ve never seen before or might never have thought would work for a children’s book?  

Colleen:  A theme I wasn’t even aware of was the need for some kind of recycling in outer space. I had no idea we had left so much litter on the moon (The Museum on the Moon). I was also unaware of the cento poem, and how seamlessly lines from so many different poems could be woven together (A Forest Song). And I would never have thought that poetry would work in comic book format (Poetry Comics).

Jill:  When you write poetry, is there a subject or a certain form you find yourself returning to again and again? 

Colleen:  As far as subjects go, I’ve discovered that this is related to geography. When I’m in California, I tend to write poems about the ocean, my feelings and experiences, and relationships. But when I’m in Iowa, I write poems about nature, the seasons, and the flower garden—especially flowers and weeds. So, I guess it’s whatever I’m immersed in at the time. If I’m in Iowa in the fall, I’m writing about the seasons, fall, leaves turning color, flowers leaving, leaves falling, leaves on the ground, raking leaves, my feelings about leaf blowers… You get the idea. And, of course, weeds. Always, the weeds. I am not of the school that thinks weeds have merit.

Jill: Except to make us appreciate flowers. 😉

Colleen: As far as a preferred poetry structure, or form, I enjoy almost any form when it seems to fit the subject matter. I have a natural tendency toward rhyme of any kind but I try not to overstay at that house. I love writing sonnets but rarely do so because they are a struggle for me. I like to experiment with structures and try on different voices to see what seems to fit best. 

I look for a collection that has at least four or five poems I want to read again. And I appreciate illustrations that enhance or add to the poem, and collections of poems that are consistent with the overall theme while varying the individual personality of each poem.

Also, I like to be charmed by a poem, not just informed. And I like factual information separate from the “song.” If there is a matter-of-fact poem paired with a set of facts, I find myself looking under the hood for the spark.

Jill: THANK YOU, Colleen, for visiting with us today! I’ve put these tasty titles on my library list so I, too, can savor them soon.

Bio: Colleen Kelley has always cherished poetry, devoured books, and been fascinated by languages and cultures. She facilitates people-to-people skills and creates non-fiction. Capturing close-ups of flowers, and sports performed to music, captivate her.

Books Referenced

Natural Geography

Awesome Earth: Concrete Poems Celebrate Caves, Canyons, and other Fascinating Landforms by Joan Bransfield Graham, illus. Tania Garcia. Clarion, 2025

A Universe of Rainbows: Multicolored Poems for a Multicolored World by Matt Forest Essenwine, illus. Jamey Christoph. Eerdmans, 2025

Trees and Green

The Pine Cone’s Secret: A Life Cycle Poem (Starting Small) by Hannah Barnaby, illus. Cédric Abt. Sourcebooks Explore, 2025.

Leafy Landmarks: Travels With Trees by Michelle Schaub, illus. Anne Lambelet. Sleeping Bear, 2024.

Dear Acorn (Love, Oak): Letter Poems to Friends by Joyce Sidman, illus. Melissa Sweet. Clarion, 2025.

The City Sings Green & Other Poems About Welcoming Wildlife by Erica Silverman, illus. Ginnie Hsu. Clarion, 2024.

Weather and Outer Space

Wind Is a Dance by Debra Kempf Shumaker, illus. Josée Bisaillon. Kids Can, 2024. 

Windsongs: Poems about Weather by Douglas Florian. Beach Lane, 2024.

I Am Gravity by Henry Herz, illus. Mercè López. Tilbury, 2024

Wild Animals

In the Desert by David Elliott, illus. Gordy Wright. Candlewick, 2025

Zoobilations!: Animal Poems and Paintings by Douglas Florian. Beach Lane, 2022.

Haiku Ew!: Celebrating the Disgusting Side of Nature by Lynn Brunelle, illus. Julia Patton. Millbrook, 2024

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright! selected by FionWaters, illus. Britta Teckentrup. Candlewick, 2021.

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry: 200 Poems with Photographs That Squeak, Soar, and Roar! (NGK Poetry). J. Patrick Lewis, ed. National Geographic Kids, 2012.

Pets and Farm Animals

Best in Show by David Elliott, illus. Leo Espinosa. Clarion, 2024.

The Smell of Wet Dog: And Other Dog Poems and Drawings by Barney Saltzberg. Neal Porter, 2024.

Bless Our Pets: Poems of Gratitude for our Animal Friends by Lee Bennett Hopkins, ed., illus. Lita Judge. Eerdmans, 2024.

Unusual Collections

The Museum on the Moon: The Curious Objects on the Lunar Surface by Irene Latham, illus. Myriam Wares. Moonshower, 2023.

A Forest Song by Kirsten Hall, illus. Evan Turk. Random House Studio, 2025.

Poetry Comics by Grant Snider. Chronicle, 2024.

Humor for the Young

How Elegant the Elephant: Poems about Animals and Insects by Mary Ann Hoberman, illus. Marla Frazee. Little, Brown, 2025.

The Boy Who Lived in a Shell: Snippets for Wandering Minds by John Himmelman. Margaret Ferguson, 2025.

Eating My Words: And 128 Other Poems by Brian P. Cleary. Millbrook, 2024.

Notes to our readers: First of all, THANK YOU, Sara Ackerman, for your time with us here on Picture Book Builders! I wish you all the best and can’t wait to see what luscious books you dream up next!

Stepping in as our 8th blogger for 2026 is one of our original contributors, the stellar Barb Rosenstock! *and the crowd goes wild*

Lastly, after 14+ years of twice-weekly posts, we here at Picture Book Builders have decided to ease off that blistering pace and slow things down just a bit. Throughout 2026, watch for our posts every Tuesday.

See you in 2026!