Georgia Heard collected these poems to comfort the children who witnessed the World Trade Center tragedy. I suspect that it was as much to help those involved in the project heal as for the children. It is a beautiful collection and will be comforting in any time of grief or fear. There are personal notes by the authors in back, some specifically related to New York City and 9-11.

Each poem is illustrated by a known picture book artist. Some very lovely pictures. The one by Kevin Hawkes expresses exactly how I feel in such stressful times-both the poem and picture. My family did, in fact, turn to nature after the tragedy (9/11). The next day we went to the mountains to hike. It is the one thing that can most help me to balance life.

poets-Eloise Greenfield, Deborah Chandra, Louise Driscoll, Georgia Heard, Gwendolyn Brooks, Susan Marie Swanson, Karla Kuskin, Margaret Tsuda, Lillian Morrison, Nancy Wood, A. L. Gordon, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, Annette Wynne, Emily Dickinson, Wendell Berry, Ann Turner
illustrators-Shane W. Evans, Vivienne Flesher, Kevin Hawkes, Yumi Heo, G. Brian Karas, Elisa Kleven, Laura McGee Kvasnosky, Petra Mathers, Jill McElmurry, Holly Meade, Hiroe Nakata, Giselle Potter, Vladimir Radunsky, Chris Raschka, Peter Sis, William Steig, Melissa Sweet, Matt Tavares
RL=3rd-5th, all ages, not at all a set age, read aloud to younger