Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices

Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices

Author: Paul Fleischman

Illustrator: Eric Beddows

Genre: Poetry

Major Awards: Newbery Medal

Grade Level: Pre-K-5

Summary: This book contains a collection of poetry about insects. Its interesting twist is that the poems are meant to have two readers. Each line is read by reader one or two, while some lines are read by both readers at once. The poems creatively provide facts about the different insects in the book (including grasshoppers, fireflies, and honeybees) while written as if they are from the bugs' points of view.

Evaluation: I actually had the privilege of reading some of the poems from this book in my Methods for Teaching Science course. I loved them a lot and I would definitely use this book in my classroom. It has great vocabulary, wonderful personification, and provides factual information in a creative way.

I think this book would be best for pre-k through fifth grade, although there is no reason it could not be used for older grades (they just might find it to be immature). This book is a great read aloud and can be used to teach children to read in chorus as well as follow along while others read aloud. It would also be a great tool for these grades because it can be used in so many ways (e.g. reading groups, in specific content areas, etc.).

There are so many ways this book could be used, but a few come to mind immediately. First, for science content, it could be used when learning about certain insects. For instance, certain grades have to learn about the life cycle of butterflies, so "Chrysalis Diary" would make a great introduction to that lesson. It could also be used to teach about personification or you could even have students write their own two-person poem. We got to do this in my science class and it was a lot of fun and a very memorable activity.