A nice little introduction to Rudyard Kipling's poetry. Most of the poems are excerpts from longer works. A paragraph before each provides useful context and a short list of definitions follow each poem to help readers out with older words. The painted illustrations are beautiful but the book design leaves much to be desired: the small (12-point) text frequently runs into the illustrations, making it very difficult to read the words, including one full-page spread with a barely-lightened block for text that is barely legible.

So, beautiful to look at, useful for old-poetry and Kipling beginners, a good selection that wisely leaves out some famous but problematic works, but not perfect as a physical book. ( )

I was only familiar with Rudyard Kipling because of folktales. Seeing this book in the series of "Poetry for Young People" got me drawn into reading his poems. There's a great introduction about his style of poetry and biographical information about Kipling. 28 of his poems are shared in this collection. Explanations about each poem, definitions of the more unknown words and illustrations are on each page. ( )

This collection of Rudyard Kipling's poems is very appealing to children. Each poem or excerpt is introduced with background information, is illustrated, and has some of its more challenging vocabulary defined for the reader at the bottom of the page. The book also has an introduction that tells the reader about Kipling and his writings. Within this collection are some verses from his work, "The Jungle Book", that kids may be interested in reading. Given that Kipling wrote 100 years ago and about British imperialism in India, many students may find his work challenging. However, I think that the presentation of this book with its illustrations, vocabulary help, and background information will help students to understand as they read independently. Appropriate for grades 4 and up. ( )

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