Dark Emperor, and Other Poems of the Night

by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Rick Allen

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2010)

I actually used to love poetry growing up, both writing and reading it.  I liked how flexible the words could be, and how good it felt to find that certain rhyming word you'd been wracking your brain for.  Still, it has been a long time since I read anything except Shakespeare's sonnets and Spenser's sonnet cycles (which, I'll admit, I love).  So going back to children's poetry, I figured, would feel a lot different, and I was not sure I would like it anymore.

I was wrong.

Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night reminded me how fun playing with words can be.  Each of the poems, each about a different animal or plant that comes to life at night, creatively used rhythm, rhyme, and even shape to shed light on creatures of the night.

A great example of rhythm, and perhaps my favorite of the poems, is in "I am a Baby Porcupette" (p. 18).  This short little poem is catchy; as I was reading it, I could picture kids almost singing along:  "I am a baby porcupette/My paws are small; my nose is wet/And as I nurse against my mom,/We mew and coo a soft duet."  Each of the four verses follows this pattern of light, bouncy language and rhythm.  I think that this style would be great for children because it would help them remember the words of the poem as well as the information.  Another good example of rhythm is found in "Ballad of the Wandering Eft" (p. 24), in which there is a repeating verse.  This, similar to a mainstream song, aids memory and understanding.  On a side note, this animal was my favorite to read about:  efts are the land stage of a newt; after several years, they actually turn green, grow gills, and return to live in the water.

This brings up one unique detail about this poetry collection:  the natural information on the facing page of each poem.  This is fantastic.  The poem is a fun introduction to an animal or plant, and then, next to a full-page illustration, is a brief paragraph that details the described being.  In each, there is at least one bit of interesting or weird information.  I learned, for instance, that orb spiders eat their webs each night after they catch their prey.  This format is a huge strength of this collection because many of the animals were unfamiliar to me, so I assume even more would be unfamiliar to children.  The language is technical but still understandable in a read-aloud for young children; older children might be able to read on their own, with some scaffolding.

One of the coolest poems, in my opinion, is "Dark Emperor," about a great horned animal.  The words of the poem are actually shaped like an owl sitting on a branch.  I remember learning about this kind of poetry, but never understood the purpose.  Looking at this page, however, it clicked.  The shape of the owl really drew my attention to the words, and I love the little lines at the end:  "disregard/the tiny hiccup/of my heart/as I flee" (p. 12).  It is such a good format for a poem, I think, especially for younger children who really latch onto the visual aspects.

Speaking of which, I finally come to the illustrations.  Allen created beautiful two-page illustrations for both the front and back end pages, the first being the sunset (an introduction to nighttime) and the last being sunrise (a logical end to the collection).  Each drawing is detailed and realistic; when I turned to the page about the spider, I (an arachnophobe) honestly felt a little anxious.  One cute detail is that each picture includes not only the subject of the current poem, but also the subject of another poem.  Mushrooms, for example, are seen in the porcupette poem; a snail is seen on the mushroom page.  Every page, however, contains the newt, crawling into or around whatever is being currently discussed.  This provides some consistency across the collection, since each poem is so different from the rest.

In conclusion, I loved this collection of poems.  I would definitely include it in my classroom library, and I think it would be a great introduction to not only creatures of the night, but also poetry styles and characteristics.