The Llama Who Had No Pajama

Genre: Poetry

The Llama Who Had No Pajama

Hoberman, Mary Ann, and Betty Fraser. The llama who had no pajama: 100 favorite poems. Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1998.  ISBN 0-15-200111-5

Mary Ann Hoberman puts together a fantastic collection of poetry.  All poems relate to children or animals.  From haikus to alliteration, this book has a wide range of poetry for children to enjoy.  The title poem happens to be the longest poem in the collection and forms a cute story about a llama.  This poem shows how a mom will do anything for her child.  The baby llama then realizes that he doesn’t need pajamas, that he can be perfectly happy with just his fur coat.  Not all the poems have a rhyme, but they all have a certain rhythm that keeps you moving.  “Permutations”, a poem about a fly, a flea, and a bee, is full of alliteration.  It is by far the hardest to read, especially if you read it fast. One poem, “Auk Talk”, even has onomatopoeia.  The three haikus within the collection, “Fireflies”, “Pythons”, and “Flamingos”, are cleverly placed within the collection.

Hoberman’s poems flow from one to the next.  They are organized by similar things being together.  It flows from insect poems, to bird poems, to mammal poems, and so on.  Fraser’s illustrations make the poems come alive.  When two or three poems are grouped on the same page, she creates the picture to include all the poems on the page.  It flows as smoothly as the poems flow.  In the poem “When I Need a Real Baby”, Fraser inserts illustrations throughout the poem to create a rebus affect to the poem. 

"Want to give young ones the fun of rhyme, rhythm, and word play? Then look for The Llama Who Had no Pajama. There's no reason to wait for poetry units at school to introduce children to verse when Mary Ann Hoberman can do it with her collection of 100 poems." -- Christian Science Monitor Best Children's Books

"This collection of some forty years of Hoberman verse is a charmer. The poems - peppy verses immediately identifiable as Hoberman's by their use of alliteration and repeated words and lines - seem to cover every subject under the sun; all are dependably child-centered." -- Horn Book

"Poems drawn from Hoberman's previous works…are packaged to delight a new generation of youngsters. Children may be reminded of A.A. Milne's poetry…but Hoberman's poetry goes deeper, offering children a new way to look at things." -- Booklist

Gold Award Winner - 1998 National Parenting Publications Awards (NAPPA)
Best Books of the Year - Child Magazine

Please check out Mary Ann Hoberman’s website for more information about her poetry and this collection.

http://www.maryannhoberman.com/books/theLlamaWho.html

This collection of poems is a great start for children to learn about different types of poems.  Other great poetry books by Mary Ann Hoberman include:

You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You

I’m Going to Grandma’s

There Once Was a Man Named Michael Finnegan

The Two Sillies

The Eensy-Weensy Spider

A Fine Fat Pig

Bugs

…And many more