Three 2025 Children's Poetry Books + Love Poem

 Hello and Happy Poetry. Friday! Be sure to visit Amy at The Poem Farm for Roundup.

Today I'm excited to share three new children's poetry books with you!

But first, a shout-out to Jonathan Humble at The Dirigible Balloon, who selected three of my poems for his "Imagine the Future" issue. I mean, what a gift his website is! Click to read and listen to my offerings, then stick around to meet some other new poem-friends.

"untitled haiku" 

"Someday" 

"The Clearing" 

Now about those new children's poetry books!

In the science/nature/informational poetry category, I give you Rings of Heartwood: Poems on Growing by Molly Beth Griffin, illus. by Claudia McGehee (Minnesota Historical Press).

First: shout-out to Claudia: I love this art SO MUCH. You may remember Claudia also illustrated Counting Winter, which I blogged about earlier this year. And now another poetry collaboration!

The book features 12 poems about growing things: tree, wood ducklings, snail, etc. and included detailed sidebars and fun facts.

I love the frog/tadpole poem "Trade," which opens with the very relatable "Nobody asked me/ if I'd like to trade / my tail for legs / my gills for lungs."

The Monarch butterfly poem is titled " A Work in Progress." Aren't we all??

I also love the cicada poem "My Outside Voice" which ends with "I'll sing you the story of what I've tunneled through/ to get here."

But perhaps my favorite favorite is "My Whole Self" about a snake looking back after shedding its skin. "I sliver away, / new and bright and shining./ I start over, / comfortable in my skin.

In the SEL/mindfulness poetry category, here's The Gift of a Broken Teacup: Poems of Mindfulness, Meditation, and Me by Allan Wolf, illus. by Jade Orlando (Candlewick Press).

This is a big book that covers a lot of ground. It reminded me of Score! 50 Poems to Motivate and Inspire by Charles Ghigna, illus. by Julia Gorton and Twist: Yoga Poems by Janet Wong, illus. by Julie Paschkis. Allan gives readers words like integrity, indomitable, and inconsequential. And yay for Allan bringing to kids Whitman's "Yawp!" My favorite line comes from the poem "I Write Myself Down!" The second stanza ends with " I write myself to life." YES!

In the Joyce Sidman category, here's her latest, Dear Acorn (Love Oak): Letter Poems to Friends by Joyce Sidman, illus. by Melissa Sweet (Clarion Books).

Joyce and I met in person back in 2016—wow, that feels like another lifetime! Click to see the pic.

This book is joyously illustrated, and I love that the poems are presented in pairs: oak, acorn; pebble, river; button, coat. And then you have the next layer: Big-small opposites. (I love when a poetry book has multiple layers!) Finally, the poems are all letters—and Joyce offers some advice at the end about how to write letter poems. I especially love the pairings that have really distinctly different voices, like Coat and Button! "Button:" (from Coat) might be my most favorite poem of all.

The final poem "To All My Creatures—" (from the Ocean) reminds me of the first poem I had published in the children's market, with a quite similar first line: "Ship Spies a Light" by Irene Latham.  Joyce's poem ends with this stanza:

Dear ones, we belong together, /swirling and teeming, travelers all./ For smaller things add up to big,/ and all things big are made of small."

Lovely, yes?

Today's ArtSpeak: PICASSO features a portrait of another one of Picasso's mistresses: Marie-Therese Walker. Marie-Therese was known as Picasso's "Golden Muse," and their affair was long-lived. It began will Picasso was married and continued after Picasso's wife left (but didn't divorce) him and while he was concurrently having an affair with Dora Maar. What a mess, right? 

By Marie-Therese's own report, their relationship was one of calm and quiet...and Picasso does portray her in that way. However, Marie-Therese eventually committed suicide, so who really knows?? Was there hidden violence? Was it love, lust, comfort, passion? I don't pretend to know. But it did bring forth a Golden Shovel love poem of the bittersweet variety, for which I am grateful. Thanks so much for reading!

Love Poem

"You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather." —Pema Chödrön

When I think of you

now, I forget what birds are,

their wings become the

clouds feathering a wintry sky.

I remember song is everything:

touch, taste, memory. All else

is noise. Even if the world says it's —

over, I'll look for you—Just

me, waiting out the weather.

- Irene Latham

Things You Can't Take from Me poem

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Jama's Alphabet Soup for what's sure to be a delicious Roundup.

Attention Picture Book writers! There's an incredible retreat happening in January with an outstanding faculty including R. Gregory Christie, Sally M. Kim, Melissa Manlove, Katrina Moore, and the unstoppable Lola M. Schaefer! It's called New Year, Renewed in Writing. I wish I could attend, but DH and I have our annual trip to the Florida Keys in January. Fingers crossed the timing works with YOUR schedule.

So, I've been going through some difficult stuff lately—an old business partnership dissolving. I was "done dirty," and the best thing, the only thing to do was cut ties and move on. 

No doubt it's from that space where this week's ArtSpeak: PICASSO poem started. The portrait is of one of Picasso's mistresses, Dora Maar. Picasso sees what he sees, but what's she thinking, really? She may be sad, but she also looks like a woman who may be thinking of ways to save herself.

You Can't Take from Me

you can't take from me

the mountains

you can't take from me

the breeze swaying pines

and when the sky

fills with proclamations—

impossible! impossible!

you can't take from me

that ripening voice inside

murmuring 

                      maybe

- Irene Latham

peonies haiku poem

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Rose at Imagine the Possibilities for Roundup.

I've got a peony poem for your today! (Very fitting, with Roundup at Rose's blog!) At first glance, I thought: I totally should have written after this piece during spring. 

But why write a poem about peonies when they are blooming? 

It's now, when the stalks are withering, that's got me thinking about what they mean and how flowers have the power to connect us to loved ones long gone...my grandma Dykes particularly comes to mind.

Also, it's a big birthday month in my family: My mother's birthday was earlier this week, and today is our oldest son's 31st birthday. Happy birthday, Daniel! There are others, too...and my father's birthday is the 17th. He would have been 79.  

For all those reasons, September feels like the perfect time to write a peony poem. Thanks so much for reading.

fluffy peonies

cozy the last unbroken vase

I remember you

- Irene Latham

p.s. Here are three websites I visited while crafting my poem:

a collection of Japanese peony poems

all about peonies

words to describe vases

another frog haiku

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Margaret at Reflections on the Teche for Roundup.

ICYMI: The good humans over at DiverseVerse hosted a cover reveal for For the Win: Poems About Phenomenal Athletes, selected by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, coming March 3, 2026 from Lerner Publishing. Each of these poems highlights a moment in the life of a contemporary athlete, from growing up to setbacks to successes to legacies and more! And we worked with quite a few new-to-us poets, and we can't wait for you to get to know their work!

Also: this is early, but NCTE has been on my mind this week, as my plans for Denver are firming up. If you, too, will be attending the conference, please come to the Poetry Peeps Meet-Up!

I woke up wanting to write a haiku—no doubt because I am updating my haiku workshop slides. :) I was thinking about the brilliance of the famous frog/old pond haiku by Basho, and had been reading this article that shares five different ways the poem has been translated. 

So I browsed the National Gallery of Art's Picasso collection, looking for something haiku-worthy, and lo, a frog!

 I downloaded the image and started thinking about what sense other than sound I might focus on...which led me down some frog holes, but then I thought: how can I play with sound, but differently than Basho? That led me to this article about frog sounds.

However, I was most captivated by Picasso's rendering of the leaping frog's wild eyes. I pondered: What's this frog feeling, thinking?

Eventually I landed in silence, which feels like the perfect place for an introverted poet. :)

raucous spring pond

frog croaks too much, too much

dives into silence

- Irene Latham

Click here for another (hopeful, singing) frog haiku I wrote during ArtSpeak: ANIMALS. Thanks so much for reading!