This volume demonstrates how the social and instructional worlds that children inhabit influence their poetry writing and performances. Drawing on rich vignettes of students from different racial, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, it describes and analyzes the work of eight to ten-year-old U.S. students involved in a month-long poetry unit. Children Writing Poems outlines the value of a 'poetic-functional' approach to help children convey a poem's meaning and mood, and expresses the need for educators to scaffold children's oral readings and performances over time.

Janine L. Certo is Associate Professor of Language and Literacy at Michigan State University, USA.

1. Introduction: "Eat it All Elaine" and Poetry Matters 2. Poetry's "Verbal Art" and Poetry Writing as a Social Practice 3. "Making the Familiar Strange:" Interpretive-Poetic Research 4. Poems, Poets, Practices: Learning through Engagement, Exploration, Mentoring and Collaboration 5. Playing with Language: Poetic Features, Interdiscursivity and Intertextuality in Children's Poems 6. Delighting in the Ride: Poetic Structure, Interdiscursivity and Intertextuality in Children's Poems 7. "Poet on Deck!" Children Grow as Poets through Performance 8. Reconsidering and Supporting Children's Poetic Voices