Classic children’s poems about nature, bravery, love, and the wild journeys of the imagination, all performed unabridged by Jim Weiss.

Poems can sweep us away to fantasy lands or long-ago times, or show us everyday people and creatures in a whole new light. In this new recording, master storyteller Jim Weiss introduces children to the magic of poetry, performing 40 classic poems, and providing brief introductions to the poets, including Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, E. E. Cummings, and many more.

And don’t miss the beautiful Illustrated Reader that we created to accompany these poems.

Includes:

Poems About Nature
Wild Rides
Poems About America
Sensible Nonsense
Poems that Take Flight
Inspiration
Bedtime and Dreamtime

Full Track List:

1. Preface
2. Nursery Rhymes and Poems from Mother Goose:
   Little Jack Horner
   Wee Willie Winkie
   There Was a Crooked Man
   Three Men in a Tub
   Old King Cole
   Hey Diddle Diddle
   Little Miss Muffet
   Peter Piper
   One Misty, Moisty Morning
3. Poems About Nature:
   About Robert Frost
   The Pasture (Frost)
4. About Robert Louis Stevenson
   Windy Nights (Stevenson)
5. Who Has Seen the Wind? (Rossetti)
6. About Christina Rossetti
   Clouds (Rossetti)
7. About Edna St. Vincent Millay
   Afternoon on a Hill (Millay)
8. About William Butler Yeats
   The Lake Isle of Innisfree (Yeats)
9. About Carl Sandburg
   Theme in Yellow (Sandburg)
10. Fog (Sandburg)
11. About Emily Dickinson
    To Make a Prairie (Dickinson)
12. I Send Two Sunsets (Dickinson)
13. About e.e. cummings
    In Just (Cummings)
14. Little Tree (Cummings)
15. Wild Ride #1:
    About Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    Paul Revere’s Ride (Longfellow)
16. All-American Poems:
    About Walt Whitman
    I Hear America Singing (Whitman)
17. About Ernest Thayer
    Casey at the Bat (Thayer)
18. Unusual Companions:
    The Bean-Stalk (Millay)
19. About John Kendrick Bangs
    The Little Elf (Bangs)
20. The Song of the Wandering Aengus (Yeats)
21. Poems that Take Flight:
    The Eagle (Tennyson)
22. About Rachel Field
    Something Told the Wild Geese (Field)
23. The Swing (Stevenson)
24. Inspiration:
    About Edgar A. Guest
    It Couldn’t be Done (Guest)
25. Wild Ride #2:
    About Alfred, Lord Tennyson
    The Charge of the Light Brigade (Tennyson)
26. Sensible Nonsense:
    About A.A. Milne
    Jonathan Jo (Milne)
27. The King’s Breakfast (Milne)
28. About Vachel Lindsay
    The Moon’s the North Wind’s Cooky (Lindsay)
29. About Edward Lear
    The Pobble Who Has No Toes (Lear)
30. Bedtime and Dreamtime:
    Bed in Summer (Stevenson)
31. About Thomas Hood
    In The Summer When I Go to Bed (Hood)
32. About Eugene Field
    Wynken, Blynken, and Nod (Field)
33. About Leigh Hunt
    Abou Ben Adhem (Hunt)
34. Conclusion

ABOUT JIM WEISS:

Jim Weiss’s story recordings and books offer a welcoming doorway into the world’s greatest stories from literature and history.  His vivid retellings of the classics have received more than one hundred major awards from organizations such as the American Library Association, Parents’ Choice Foundation, Oppenheim Toy Portfolio, and Film Advisory Board.  More importantly, the stories form the heart of daily learning and meaningful entertainment in households and schools around the world.

To hear Jim tell a story is to become swept up in the tale.  He includes information about people and events behind the stories, and encourages children to read the original classics, on their own or with the help of more experienced readers.  So listeners leave the storyteller’s circle inspired to learn even more and to develop their own creative gifts.

Jim Weiss believes the joy of reading, writing and creative activity begins in the presence of the storyteller.