Where I Live: Poems About My Home, My Street, and My Town

Home is shoes tucked under the bed while you sleep, or fancy-dancying at the neighborhood block party. It’s buttermilk biscuits and gospel music at the church picnic. It’s traffic lights and parked cars; rooftop views as far as you can see; ice cream trucks and yellow boots; sharing breakfast cereal and boiled eggs with your brothers; or running through sprinklers with water on your lips, dripping from eyelashes like fat raindrops. Whether we hang our hats in a walk-up apartment in the city, a farmhouse in the country, or any place in between, the poems in this collection celebrate the places where we live: our homes, our streets, our towns. Gathered by eminent poet and anthologist Paul B. Janeczko, these thirty-four inviting verses are paired with light-filled illustrations by Hyewon Yum evoking the warm details of daily life. Francisco X. Alarcón * Dave Crawley * Walter de la Mare * Rebecca Kai Dotlich * Eleanor Farjeon * Aileen Fisher * Betsy Franco * Charles Ghigna * Nikki Giovanni * Nikki Grimes * Avis Harley * Patricia Hubbell * Langston Hughes * Reuben Jackson * Paul B. Janeczko * X. J. Kennedy * Irene Latham * Lois Lenski * Myra Cohn Livingston * Wes Magee * Lilian Moore * Naomi Shihab Nye * Lin Oliver * Linda Sue Park * Iain Crichton Smith * Gary Soto * Amy Ludwig VanDerwater * Hope Vestergaard * Nicholas Virgilio * Charles Waters * Janet Wong * Valerie Worth * Charlotte Zolotow