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Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems
Everything that happens when you go camping can be an adventure, from getting dressed inside your sleeping bag on a chilly morning to meeting a moose to sharing secrets in a tent at night. Kristine O’Connell George turns the memorable moments of a family outing into spirited, evocative verse, and Kate Kiesler’s vivid paintings provide a cast of characters and the perfect setting. The captivating poems and pictures in Toasting Marshmallows will leave readers with wonderful memories of a camping trip—even if they’ve never been on one!
48 pages, Hardcover
First published February 28, 2001
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122 people want to read
About the author
Kristine O'Connell George
19 books25 followersKristine O'Connell George is one of the principal voices in contemporary children's poetry. Since her first highly-acclaimed book, The Great Frog Race was published in 1997, Kristine O'Connell George's poetry has generated excitement and earned honors and praise. Awards for her books include the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, International Reading Association / Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet Award, the Golden Kite, Myra Cohn Livingston Poetry Awards, Claudia Lewis Poetry Awards, ALA notables, NCTE notables, School Library Journal Best Books, Hornbook Fanfare, Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Award, and IRA-CBC Children's Choice.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews
May 20, 2023
I love poetry and even write some in my free time and am always looking for more of these themed books to read. Also, since my family and I are going camping soon, I wanted some reads to get me in the mood for it! This read fit the bill! In Toasting Marshmallows, the author takes you on a journey reading all about the different adventures one can have while camping. In addition, the illustrator makes those word pictures comes to life with beautiful and vivid oil paintings! I definitely want to read more of this author and illustrator’s other collaborations!! Highly recommend!
July 3, 2010
The depth of these simple poems seriously blew me away. The book jacket mentions that the poems bring back camping memories, and for me that’s exactly what they did. The simplicity of the poems and the rich pictures took me back down memory lane to the days of my family’s own camping experiences. There were only a few poems that did not reflect experiences that I had as a child. The poems have a wonderful musical quality to them.
I could see an elementary teacher using this to introduce a unit on wildlife or the outdoors, possibly concocting some smores and having a read-in. It would definitely be a way to get students to talk about their memories and access prior knowledge about these things. Also, it would just be a wonderful, fun book to take camping with the family and read around the campfire.
I think children would love this book for the same reasons I do – the pictures look real and have many rich details. Even though the poems themselves tell separate events, the pictures connect them together and almost tell a story of their own that kids would be able to easily pick up on. The music feel of the words would also be fun for them if they were reading aloud.
I could see an elementary teacher using this to introduce a unit on wildlife or the outdoors, possibly concocting some smores and having a read-in. It would definitely be a way to get students to talk about their memories and access prior knowledge about these things. Also, it would just be a wonderful, fun book to take camping with the family and read around the campfire.
I think children would love this book for the same reasons I do – the pictures look real and have many rich details. Even though the poems themselves tell separate events, the pictures connect them together and almost tell a story of their own that kids would be able to easily pick up on. The music feel of the words would also be fun for them if they were reading aloud.
March 14, 2010
Toasting Marshmallows is a collection of camping poems by Kristine O’Connell George. The many adventure of camping are described in the book such as pitching the tent, getting dressed in the sleeping bag, fishing, discovering an old cabin, and simply taking in the scenery. I enjoyed this collection of poems as is took me back to the days of camping with my family. I think young students who have also experienced camping would relate to the many adventures included in the collection. It would also give readers who have not been able to experience camping an idea of what it is like to be a part of nature for a short time and the wonderful memories that come along with it. This themed book of poems also has many examples for young poets of the various ways poetry can be conveyed. In some poems the lines are arranged to represent the subject of the poem. For example, the lines of “Eavesdropping” about the moon are arranged to look like a crescent moon. Some poems are short while others depict a dialogue. This is a great addition to any elementary classroom’s poetry collection.
October 5, 2009
A family camping trip from start to finish is told in these delightful, simple poems. From raising the tent to roasting marshmallows and from spooky, warm campfire tales to packing up to go home...these snippets of a family's vacation is sure to trip memories in all of us. Toasting Marshmallows is a collection of poems that recap the best that camping outdoors has to offer.
Used for October, 2009 "Let's Camp-Out!" storytime.
Used for October, 2009 "Let's Camp-Out!" storytime.
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February 12, 2018This is a great little book about camping. It brings out the innocence of camping with a caregiver. The pictures are beautiful and the words are inspiring. This is a good read to introduce summer fun.
July 16, 2008
Anyone who has ever expereinced "the great outdoors" as a kid will adore this book. The last poem, where the girl can still smell the campfire in her clothes, always brings tears to my eyes.
August 26, 2025
We took this collection of poems with us on a family camping trip and they were a lot of fun to read by the campfire while we waited for the stars to come out.
Very sentimental and fun. I want to remember how bats interrupted our reading and the poem about the rocks.
Very sentimental and fun. I want to remember how bats interrupted our reading and the poem about the rocks.
February 9, 2014
This collection of camping poems would be great for a family to read prior to or during a family camping trip. I like the author's use of variety. All of the poems entice our senses! Some poems rhyme, others do not. In some poems the text is written in shapes. For example, "Tent" is written in the shape of a triangle (tent shape). In "Eavesdropping" it is written in the shape of a moon since the poem personifies the moon. In a classroom it would be a perfect opportunity to connect children to some of their favorite memories of time with family in the summer. For others, it may be the only glimpse of what it's like to go camping because they've never been before. I think it would be fabulous in an elementary classroom to pitch a tent, make a fire (out of construction paper of course), make smores, etc. Students can bring their sleeping bags and enjoy what it's like to go camping. Students can extend the lesson by creating a classroom poem.
April 15, 2013
Kristine is a masterful wordsmith. Her poems are fun, meaningful & can be addressed on a variety of levels.
June 28, 2022
Toasting Marshmallows: Camping PoemsKristine O'Connell George
In Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne wrote this about her love for the outdoors: “The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside.” These poems are written from the perspective of a young girl who does just that. Kristine O’Connell George’s book Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems takes us into the interior world of a child as experienced while camping with her family.
A poet friend has been telling me about this collection of camping poems for several years, but I couldn’t find it in the library. Turns out it was on a different shelf than the other Kristine O’Connell George poetry books. I read it right before our trip west, and the dedication honors the author’s family camping trips in an orange tent to destinations that included California, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. The thirty poems describe a journey — an outer one and also an inner one — that happens when a child connects with the natural world.
The poems present a girl with an interior life, a girl who likes to take a "Forest Walk" alone. Her shared experiences with her family are subjects of many of the poems, from the setting up of “Tent” to the taking down of “Pulling Up Stakes” to the titular "Toasting Marshmallows." In “Cave,” the girl explores “black passages / in this alien underground land” hand in hand with her dad.
But my favorite poems show a girl experiencing nature alone.
The tone of these poems is inviting, and the paintings by Kate Kiesler are idyllic. In “Sleeping Outside,” we join this child as she muses about “a small tent / staked to a huge planet” with illustrations of star-speckled pines. We visit exotic locales like “Max’s Bait Shop,” “Abandoned Cabin,” and “Old Truck,” where her imagination comes alive.
This girl is just the right age for exploring, getting dirty, discovering the wonders of things that might not sound wonderful, like mosquitoes, bees, mice, and spiders. Oh, sure, she also encounters also a doe and an owl and a moose, but part of the fun of going outside is abandoning her critter prejudices.
George’s poetry books for children (I’ve read three of them) always include a shape poem. In this collection, I like “Eavesdropping,” shaped like a crescent moon. The moon curves left instead of right, so the first line is near the middle of the page. The very shape of the poem makes the reader slow down.
Similarly, the poem “Flashlight” is actually four haiku, each spotlighted inside a family member’s flashlight beam:
Many of George’s poems take one thing and look at it in an unusual way. A pebble used for skipping is a “telegram.” In “Rowing to the Island,” a girl and her mother do just that, but the poem describes the action this way: “Such hard work, / pulling an island / across a lake.”
We don’t often give children enough time and space outdoors to do important things, like skip rocks, or pick up two — “one to keep, / one to hide / in my secret place.” Do we allow children time to sit long enough to count seventeen jays, to watch a cloud that looks like a panther, to wait “until the beetle reaches the pine” (from “By Myself”)?
Kirkus Reviews praised “Toasting Marshmallows,” saying, “The changing layout of each page gives a sense of surprise to the most ordinary of events.” The camping activities rendered as poems and illustrations in this book may be ordinary, but they are not typical. Not enough children are transformed in the presence of a “Moose Brunch,” in which the creature “halfway / between a camel and a horse, / with a bit too much of everything.”
When this girl returns home, the journey stays with her. Her Flannel shirt, with its treasured camping smells, stays hidden in her bottom drawer, along with a poem.
In Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne wrote this about her love for the outdoors: “The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside.” These poems are written from the perspective of a young girl who does just that. Kristine O’Connell George’s book Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems takes us into the interior world of a child as experienced while camping with her family.
A poet friend has been telling me about this collection of camping poems for several years, but I couldn’t find it in the library. Turns out it was on a different shelf than the other Kristine O’Connell George poetry books. I read it right before our trip west, and the dedication honors the author’s family camping trips in an orange tent to destinations that included California, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. The thirty poems describe a journey — an outer one and also an inner one — that happens when a child connects with the natural world.
The poems present a girl with an interior life, a girl who likes to take a "Forest Walk" alone. Her shared experiences with her family are subjects of many of the poems, from the setting up of “Tent” to the taking down of “Pulling Up Stakes” to the titular "Toasting Marshmallows." In “Cave,” the girl explores “black passages / in this alien underground land” hand in hand with her dad.
But my favorite poems show a girl experiencing nature alone.
The tone of these poems is inviting, and the paintings by Kate Kiesler are idyllic. In “Sleeping Outside,” we join this child as she muses about “a small tent / staked to a huge planet” with illustrations of star-speckled pines. We visit exotic locales like “Max’s Bait Shop,” “Abandoned Cabin,” and “Old Truck,” where her imagination comes alive.
This girl is just the right age for exploring, getting dirty, discovering the wonders of things that might not sound wonderful, like mosquitoes, bees, mice, and spiders. Oh, sure, she also encounters also a doe and an owl and a moose, but part of the fun of going outside is abandoning her critter prejudices.
George’s poetry books for children (I’ve read three of them) always include a shape poem. In this collection, I like “Eavesdropping,” shaped like a crescent moon. The moon curves left instead of right, so the first line is near the middle of the page. The very shape of the poem makes the reader slow down.
Similarly, the poem “Flashlight” is actually four haiku, each spotlighted inside a family member’s flashlight beam:
Many of George’s poems take one thing and look at it in an unusual way. A pebble used for skipping is a “telegram.” In “Rowing to the Island,” a girl and her mother do just that, but the poem describes the action this way: “Such hard work, / pulling an island / across a lake.”
We don’t often give children enough time and space outdoors to do important things, like skip rocks, or pick up two — “one to keep, / one to hide / in my secret place.” Do we allow children time to sit long enough to count seventeen jays, to watch a cloud that looks like a panther, to wait “until the beetle reaches the pine” (from “By Myself”)?
Kirkus Reviews praised “Toasting Marshmallows,” saying, “The changing layout of each page gives a sense of surprise to the most ordinary of events.” The camping activities rendered as poems and illustrations in this book may be ordinary, but they are not typical. Not enough children are transformed in the presence of a “Moose Brunch,” in which the creature “halfway / between a camel and a horse, / with a bit too much of everything.”
When this girl returns home, the journey stays with her. Her Flannel shirt, with its treasured camping smells, stays hidden in her bottom drawer, along with a poem.
December 9, 2019
Book Title: Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems
Author/Illustrator: Kristine O'Connell George
Reading Level: LG
Book Level: 3.9
Book Summary:
A poetry book that contains 30 poems about camping.
Bookshelf Mentor Writing Trait:
Presentation- This book contains a lot of different poems with different feelings and moods about the main topic of camping. I would read this book aloud and then have students vote on one single topic for the whole class to write a poem on. It should be something that students can all relate to, so make sure to scaffold with a brainstorm of what students know about the topic before asking them to write about it. I would then have students write their own poem about the topic the whole class chose to write about, ideas could be winter, school, or school lunch or recess. Something that all students can relate to. Then have students share their poems by either reading aloud themselves or reading it aloud for them to the whole class. I would then talk with students about how the poems are all different even though they all are on the same topic. I would talk about how you present information in your writing can influence readers opinion on the topic. While some classmates may have written about the bad things on the topic some may have written about the good things.
Other suggestions:
This book would also be a great mentor text to have students write poems on one topic and collect them together to publish their own anthology of poems on a single topic.
Author/Illustrator: Kristine O'Connell George
Reading Level: LG
Book Level: 3.9
Book Summary:
A poetry book that contains 30 poems about camping.
Bookshelf Mentor Writing Trait:
Presentation- This book contains a lot of different poems with different feelings and moods about the main topic of camping. I would read this book aloud and then have students vote on one single topic for the whole class to write a poem on. It should be something that students can all relate to, so make sure to scaffold with a brainstorm of what students know about the topic before asking them to write about it. I would then have students write their own poem about the topic the whole class chose to write about, ideas could be winter, school, or school lunch or recess. Something that all students can relate to. Then have students share their poems by either reading aloud themselves or reading it aloud for them to the whole class. I would then talk with students about how the poems are all different even though they all are on the same topic. I would talk about how you present information in your writing can influence readers opinion on the topic. While some classmates may have written about the bad things on the topic some may have written about the good things.
Other suggestions:
This book would also be a great mentor text to have students write poems on one topic and collect them together to publish their own anthology of poems on a single topic.
February 7, 2023
After reading Toasting Marshmallows, I can discuss with my students the importance of titles when writing a poem. I will have my students brainstorm something they have interest. It should be very narrow in ideas. When reading this book, each page had a title of the object discussing on each page. The poem correlated and discussed details of the object. I will tell the importance of details by explaining suing your five senses to describe the object. This will allow the students to brainstorm the object. Once they write down some elements of the object, they can start writing of the object in their poem. Once they are finished writing the poem, I would like the students to share to the class their poem. The students can also feel free to draw an image of the object they wrote the poem about. I will also discuss that the words fit the shape on the object per page. The first page discussed a tent and the words were written in a tent shape. The students can also use their creativity to make shapes with their words. After finished, we will hang the work in the class or hall to show all the hard work they have learned.
September 3, 2025
Read this review or all of my reviews on my site!
One of those ‘read to the children over a few evenings, so I should count it’ sort of books.
Warm front. Cold back.
I turn around.
Warm back. Cold front.
I turn around.I lean against Mom,
my head on her shoulder.
Warm all over.
And it’s actually a really fun book. The feeling of camping… in poetry form!
December 10, 2017
I like George's "Little Dog Poems" better. This book seems to be for older children, as the poems are longer and more complicated. I didn't relate to much of this book. I suspect that these are George's memories, which is really neat, but not what I expected. For example, I've never found an abandoned cabin. It is interesting, but I though the camping poems would be more general for my classroom use.
December 7, 2019
I enjoyed this book a lot! I felt that it was a very enjoyable read that easily caught and kept my attention. While my own family did not ever really go camping, I was still able to relate well to the text. I went camping one time with my aunt and uncle and when reading this book, I was reminded of very similar times with them.
October 8, 2017
This is a beautifully illustrated book of poetry that tells us a story of family enjoying camping adventure. This book could be used in a classroom when learning about writing poetry or personal narratives.
March 12, 2019
Challenge: Middle Grade March - Book written in verse (4). The poetic tale of a family's camping trip told from the perspective of the young daughter. Verse is written is varied poetic forms and illustrations compliment the story within the verses nicely. A book to touch the child in us all.
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March 4, 2021This is a good poetry book about camping. Children usually like to learn about fun activities like camping and this book talks about all the stuff they do while camping.
Age Level: 4-7 years
Lexile Level: NP
Age Level: 4-7 years
Lexile Level: NP
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March 2, 2017unique, life-like, adventurous
May 21, 2017
Illustrations are beautiful and vibrant. Love that the poems include the camping theme. So different.
December 5, 2017
This book could be used in a classroom when learning about writing poetry or personal narratives.
August 14, 2019
This is a cool book of poems about camping.
September 15, 2019
Cute book but most importantly it is so helpful when big words are introduced but they rhyme with the next last word; the rhyme helps the reader figure out how to pronounce a big word.
November 15, 2019
I did not really like this but I do not really like camping so the poems bored me a bit. I like to use this as an example of poetry can be about anything as long as there is feeling.
October 21, 2020
This is a good poetic tale regarding what families might do when they embark on a camping adventure together.
November 17, 2020
Family time, bonfires, science, camping.
April 24, 2021
Absolutely delightful! I think my camping grands will love reading this! The language and camping experiences are spot on. And delightful! Oh. I said that. Still. Delightful!
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April 29, 2021This book of poems about the greatest family trip you could take will always be a treasure.
April 6, 2022
Adventures of a camping experience!
December 5, 2022
This book features the memorable moments of a family who is out camping together
Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews