Put Your Eyes Up Here and Other School Poems

(image taken from kallidakos.com, retrieved January 27, 2013)

Author: Kalli Dakos

Illustrator: G. Brian Karas

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Year: 2003

ISBN: 0689811179

Put Your Eyes Up Here and Other School Poems is a book of 46 school themed poems for children written by Kalli Dakos.  This collection offers funny yet thoughtful poems detailing the school year of a young girl named Penny. Arranged loosely around the school year calendar this book introduces Penny to her new teacher Ms.   Roys. She wears fantastic costumes, bites her nails, and believes that former students remain in the school as friendly ghosts. She keeps a magic wand on her desk to remind her student that they all have a bit of magic inside. Throughout the progression of the book young Penny moves from feelings of apprehension about her “odd” new teacher to ending the school year by trying to find the perfect gift for the teacher she doesn’t want to leave. She finally convinces her classmates to give Ms. Roys a bouquet of perfect acrylic fingernails from her fathers’ salon.  A poem about a unique and “odd” gift for her unique and “odd” teacher nicely rounds out this collection.

 Most of the poems are written in the first person voice of Penny as she describes an overnight field trip to the museum, Ms. Roys crawling under the bathroom sink in the girls’ room to read graffiti left by a girl in 1934, and her feelings of joy when Ms. Roys writes a poem all about her. A few are written in Ms. Roys voice and usually strive to make a student feel special or to open their eyes to a different point of view.

While many of the poems are humorous and lend themselves to laughter and fond remembrances, there are some serious moments of thoughtful reflection. Special Eyeballs in particular allows the reader to empathize with a young child’s desire to feel special to someone.

I Don’t Believe In Ghosts and A Gift for Ms. Roys are written in such a manner that they can be read as scripts or acted out as a skit. While others such as Why We’re Sitting at Our Desks Wearing Raincoats and Holding Umbrellas and Don’t Go Near It use shaped verse technique to enhance the look and feel of the poems.

The black and white illustrations by G. Brian Karas are simply done and yet add character to this book of verse and are aptly suited to the poetry within. The illustrations add just the right touch to this work without distracting the reader from the poetry. The table of contents allows the reader to find a particular poem with ease while the headings on each page describe what the poem is about. This is helpful as some of the poems to not overtly state this. One such example is:

Sleeping Beside a Stegosaurus on an Overnight Class Trip to the Museum

You were big,

I am small,

I am short,

You were tall.

You lived before,

I breathe today,

I walk the earth,

You died away.

You are extinct,

I hope to last,

I’m the present,

You are the past.

Your bones are here,

And I am too,

I am sleeping,

Right beside you.

You were wild,

And I am tame,

But something about us,

Is the same,

the same,

the same.

The above poem lends itself perfectly to a unit on dinosaurs for elementary school aged children.  If an overnight field trip could be arranged a reading of this poem while students are surrounded by dinosaur exhibits. If an overnight trip is not an option then a reading of this in the classroom before the beginning of the unit would be an option.

For those that are in the library profession, a reading of this poem would be a wonderful start to a story time about dinosaurs or perhaps a visiting program about dinosaurs from the local science museum.