Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Give Me Wings
Illustrator: Ponder Goembel
Poetry Picture Book
For ages 6 to 8
Holiday House, 2010 ISBN: 978-0823420230
For many people their favorite dreams are the ones in which they are flying. In these dreams they can soar in the air without needing any kind of mechanical aid to help them do so. With arms held wide, or with wings attached to their arms, they are able to fly high above the ground and feel the freedom of not being tied to the earth.
In this delightful book, poet Lee Bennett Hopkins brings us a selection of poems that take us, at least for a little time, up into the air. He encourages us to imagine what it would be like if we were to wake up one morning to find that we had wings attached to our arms. He tells us the story of a boy who, at one time, was able to fly. Every night the boy lay on his bed and “willed myself to fly.” It was hard work, and sometimes an hour would go by before he finally felt himself float up above his bed. By using a “swimming motion” the boy would make his way over to the window and then he would go out into the night sky.
Humans are not the only ones who dream of flying. In one of the poems we meet a cat who is just a “scruffy house cat,” but she “dreams all day / of wings and sky.” At night the cat climbs a ladder and swings back and forth on a trapeze until it is time to finish with “somersaults / to wild applause.”
The wonderful collection wraps us with a poem by Lee Bennett Hopkins that describe how we should put our wings away into a wing box where they will lie, safe and sound, until we need them “for / tomorrow’s / flight.”
This is a book for anyone who has dreamed (or daydreamed) about flying. Readers will enjoy a brief time when they can take flight through these poems and explore hopes and dreams that float as soft as downy feathers on the wind.
