Caroline Kennedy was in Los Angeles recently as part of her eight-city tour for Poems to Learn by Heart, illustrated by Jon J Muth (Disney-Hyperion), her fourth poetry anthology and one she calls a kind of companion piece to 2005’s A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children. “But Poems to Learn by Heart is different in that it’s for slightly older readers, although there’s a progression from simpler to more complicated or longer poems,” Kennedy told PW. “There are a lot of non-rhyming poems, but more of the traditional old chestnuts as well.” Since its release last month, Poems to Learn has sold nearly 21,000 copies at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan.
Kennedy was aware that many people bought A Family of Poems for their daughters, so she tried for a more diverse selection for the new collection. She first consulted her home library, which includes “a few hundred” poetry books, many of which belonged to her mother. They were the primary source material for the new book, but she also consulted the public library stacks and took suggestions from friends. Another important resource: Kennedy has been involved with the poetry program at DreamYard Prep in the Bronx for many years, working with young poets. “These kids helped me with the book, too,” she said. “They would come down every couple of weeks to the publisher’s office and we would talk about poems and read poems. So this made it a much more fun and dynamic process for me.”
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