Hip Hop Speaks to Children

A celebration of poetry with a beat 

Edited by Nikki Giovanni

Giovanni, Nikki, ed. Hip Hop Speaks to Children : a Celebration of Poetry with a Beat. Illustrated by Kristen Balouch, Michele Noiset, Jeremy Tugeau, Alicia Vergel de Dios, and Damian Ward. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2008. 

ISBN 9781402210488

Hip Hop Speaks to Children is an amazing collection of notable poets and artists like Kanye West, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Queen Latifah, Walter Dean Myers, Martin Luther King Jr., and Maya Angelou. The book comes with an audio CD that contains vocal representation of many of the poems. Some of the poems are simply read aloud by the poet, while others are performed by an artist. After reading the book alone, and then reading it again with the audio CD, I recommend using the CD. While all the poems have something special, they can be difficult to read because of the dialect and language. That is where the audio comes in handy. It provides a bridge between what the artists is trying to say and the reader in understanding the message. Listening to the emotion of the artists speaking, singing, or rapping allows readers to feel and experience the poems the way they were meant to be. 

This book will appeal to all ages of people, but it is geared toward the upper elementary and middle school student though content, illustration, and tone. Every page of the book has an illustration that enhances the poems in a visual artistic way. They are colorful, meaningful, and on a few pages over powering of the poem.  Particular illustrations have too much going on in the drawing that the poem does not seem to be the center of attention. This book has many illustrators with different and distinctive artistic style. The many illustrators and many poets gives all readers a nice variety of styles and forms. With fifty-one poems in this collection there are many poetic elements used for meaning, rhythm, sound, figurative language, sense imagery and emotional impact. There are examples of meter and patterns in the rhythm of the different poems. The main sounds of the book are rhyming and alliteration. The figurative language of the poems stands out in similes and metaphors. Every poem has a different tone and mood, but every reader should have a personal response to more than one poem in the book.

The layout of the book is designed for easy access to each poem with a table of contents with page numbers and track numbers if available, as well as an index at the back. In the beginning of the book, Nikki Giovanni provides an interesting introduction of the history behind hip hop and stories with rhythm. The overall quality of this book is truly amazing and filled with a lot of talent. Readers will experience a variety of emotions as they journey through this collection.

Any number of the poems in this book would be amazing in a poetry break or as an introduction to a lesson. The poem I am choosing to highlight is from Ladies First by Queen Latifah. I highlight this poem because the artist is well known, and when it is performed by the artist not many people would think of it as a poem but a song. What this will teach the students is that a lot of songs they hear on the radio are simply poems performed to music and beats. As an introduction to poetry I would play track 12 on the audio CD of this book. After the students listen to the performance, we will have a discussion about what is poetry. Will we also discuss different poetic elements like sound and rhythm.

from Ladies First by Queen Latifah

I break into a lyrical freestyle

Grab the mic, look into the crowd and see smiles

Cause they see a woman standing up on her own two

Sloppy slouching is something I won't do

Some think that we can't flow (can't flow)

I'm gonna mess around and flip the scene into reverse

(With what?) With a little touch of "Ladies First"

Who said the ladies couldn't make it, you must be blind

If you don't believe, well here, listen to this rhyme

Ladies first, there's not time to rehearse

I'm divine and my mind expands throughout the universe

A female rapper with a message to send

The Queen Latifah is a perfect specimen