Title: Poems for Every Season: A Year of Haiku, Sonnets, and More

Author: Bette Westera (translated by David Colmer)

Illustrator: Henriette Boerendans (illustrations created with woodcuts)

Publisher/Year: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers/2026 (originally published in the Netherlands in 2024)

Format: Hardcover

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Poems for Every Season is a lovely book featuring thirteen different types of poems and clever woodcut illustrations of a myriad of peaceful plants and adorable animals. The book, which has earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and others, is a joyful celebration of our four changing seasons. Back matter, written clearly and concisely, offers a definition of each poem type.

Teachers especially may find this book helpful while teaching poetry forms to their students. Kids will learn familiar forms like haiku, limericks, and sonnets, as well as fun unusual forms like elevenies, diamantes, and stacking poems. Kids and adults will surely delight in trying their hand at some of the different forms, such as the acrostic poem seen below for April entitled “Spring Fever.” In an acrostic, the first letter of each line spells out a name, word, or phrase. What name do you see in April’s poem?

Kids will love spotting all the furry, fuzzy, or flying animals, such as a fawn, a lamb, a woodpecker, a badger, a hedgehog, and a flock of geese, to name just a few, frolicking, foraging, and fluttering amid the flowers, trees, and gardens or scampering through the snow.

Poems for Every Season is a great introduction to poetry for kids, wrapped up in an appealing picture book that grownups will enjoy too. My grandmother Harriet was a poet and an animal lover, and I’m sure she would have liked this book.

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