Our evening walks around Portland are even more delightful these days as more and more neighbors have added poetry posts to their yards. Poetry posts, you ask? They are simple wooden poles, kind of like a “For Sale” signpost, but with a see-through, covered box attached. Inside the box is a poem, often in multiple copies so that passersby may help themselves. We don’t know if poetry posts exist outside Portland, OR, but we think they should.

We frequent poetry posts that most often feature poems written for adults. We’ve returned from walks with gems from the likes of Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, and William Stafford. Occasionally, we’ve seen a Shel Silverstein poem. But Multnomah County Library’s youth services director, Ellen Fader, is bringing more children’s poets to her Portland neighborhood. Ellen added a poetry post to her yard last fall, and the first poem she featured was “Brother” by Mary Ann Hoberman, the current U.S. children’s poet laureate. Here are its opening verses, which appear in The Llama Who Had No Pajama: 100 Favorite Poems (Houghton, 1987):

I had a little brother

And I brought him to my mother

And I said I want another

Little brother for a change.

In true librarian-educator form, Ellen included notes about Hoberman and her role as children’s poet laureate. Not only did Ellen give her neighbors a terrific poem, but she also introduced them to a woman whose lifelong mission has been to connect children with the sheer delight of poetry. Ellen quoted John Barr, president of the Poetry Foundation, as he appointed Hoberman to her new position: “Generations of readers who first discovered poetry in the books of Mary Ann Hoberman remember it not as a dry textbook encounter but as a moment of joyous play. Her poems tease young minds even as they please young ears with rhythm and rhyme.”

As National Poetry Month approaches, we find ourselves thinking about how naturally children take to poetry when it’s introduced to them in a thoughtful way. We are reminded of the many delightful picture books in rhyme that Hoberman has created over her long career (her first book, All My Shoes Come in Twos, was published by Little, Brown in 1957). She has written more than 40 books, and many are still in print. Her A House Is a House for Me, winner of the children’s National Book Award, is still as fresh and lively as it was 33 years ago, when it was first published by Viking Penguin. Her captivating verses introduce young children to one delectable word after another: “…a hive is a house for a bee; houses for rabbits are hutches; a husk is a house for a corn ear; a pod is a place for a pea.”

Another Hoberman gift to the storytime crowd is the “Sing-Along Stories” series (Little, Brown), which she created with illustrator Nadine Bernard Westcott. These books first appeared in the late 1990s and they’re still going strong. Hoberman’s adaptions—Mary Had a Little Lamb, Miss Mary Mack, The Eensy-Weensy Spider, and many other familiar folk poems and songs—enchant preschoolers with their strong rhymes and intriguing narrative extensions. Perfect for chanting and hand-clapping, they offer an early experience with rhyming and wordplay, and they never fail to make storytime more fun.

In honor of National Poetry Month, in April, we encourage you to visit the Poetry Foundation’s website. There, you’ll find an interview with Hoberman, as well as a video where she reads her own work and poems by some of her favorite children’s poets. While you’re there, check out the article by Susan Thomsen, in which she writes about “Poetry Fridays,” a weekly online celebration of all things poetical, by the community of children’s and young adult literature bloggers. Another kind of poetry post, equally enchanting!