"Some of the most important things in life are not necessarily practical."
Writing a poem for kids is easy, right? Just craft some sing-songy rhymes, throw in some fuzzy bunnies and talking clouds and you’ve got a hit. Not quite. On a recent afternoon, Helen Moore is talking about her new Scholastic book, “Pick a Poem,” a collection of verse for kids aged five to seven. But the work she put into the book is hardly kids’ stuff. Moore is throwing out terms like “addressing core competencies” and “fostering phonemic awareness” as she describes her process of crafting the kind of poetry for early grade-schoolers that’ll properly fire up their brains. “Writing for children is very challenging,” explains Moore, a book editor by day. “It’s like writing a recipe for a very specialized audience. Where do you start the recipe? ‘Go out and catch a chicken’? It’s something you have to think about very carefully.” But while her working method may be complex, her reason for writing “Pick a Poem” was quite elementary. “My thought behind putting this together was that you can teach children how to use language by traditional methods such as drilling, but there’s also a more fun — maybe even silly — way to do it,” she says. The roughly 300 poems — a few public-domain classics among them — cover every occasion and topic, from holidays to reptiles to math, giving teachers and parents a quiver of quick-draw options for squeezing some language learning into a typical day. In an era when many kids launch an iPad app before they turn a page, it’s a decidedly old-school way to teach language. And hey, what’s the real-world use of poetry, anyway? Moot question. “Some of the most important things in life are not necessarily practical,” says Moore. “But poetry can enrich a person’s life much like music or great art does.” And what better time for a dose of verse than National Poetry Month? Moore will be at the Clark County Library’s Spring Fling Book Fair 2-4 p.m. April 27.