Amazing Faces

Review
By Literate Lives

From the moment I saw the cover of this book, I was hooked! It is a cover filled with adult and children faces, each face unique. I inferred from the cover that the inside would be filled with poems about people from very diverse backgrounds. I was not disappointed when I opened the book! . . . Each face, no matter what ethnicity, comes with a vibrant story of its own. From the child watching his mom sew late into the night, to the child falling asleep, to the child who speaks two languages, to the kind teacher, to the child with friendship issues, to the child engaged in karate, to the child playing football, to the child living in the desert—all these faces have stories to tell that are uniquely their own. Lee Bennett Hopkins has done an amazing job with the poems he has collected from some very talented writers and poets. The sequence of the poetry seems very thoughtful, because of how seamlessly each poem flows, one to the next. He has even included one of his own pieces, a lovely poem about how a boy and a girl fall in love at a restaurant amongst the hamburgers and french fries. The gift of Amazing Faces is that the situations in which these ‘amazing faces’ find themselves, are scenarios to which many children can relate. No matter what your face looks like, chances are you have been through one or more of the experiences in this book. Amazing Faces was a true find, and I can’t wait to share it with my class. It might make the perfect second poetry book to share after we have some fun with the first. —Literate Lives