Outside Inside Poems

by Arnold Adoff

Poems reflect a child's thoughts inside and outside, describing what he sees and feels

36 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Jesse McMorris · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author of this did his poems in a unique way by putting the poems in unique different places in the book. And always using the Outside or Inside line in the start of his poems. John Steptoe the illustrator of the book did not use any colors in this book and stuck with black and white. His emotions that has in the book are something that gave the collection of poems a different feel and almost a different dimension. All the illustrations in this book are extremely simple but the ones that he did show emotion in his picture and faces you can tell what emotions that he tried to give out. There isn’t really a plot to this book, but the teachable moment would be to appreciate different types of poetry or poetry just in general because if students can get excited about certain types of poems that will make them appreciate it even more.

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though the subtitle of the book indicates that these are separate poems, they had no titles and read like one long poem to me. All the pictures had these little squares tilted on edge in them, like confetti, and I just don't get what they're supposed to represent or why they're there. Frankly, some of the poems didn't make sense to me. I've read other books of poetry by Adoff that I've really liked; this wasn't one of them.

[Leslie Ramirez]

This poem book written by Arnold Adoff is so detailed and wonderful to read. It captures all the little elements and things we usually don't notice. In the book the little boy is describing all he sees and hears and what is inside of them. The words "out' and "in" are always capitalized and there is rhyming in the poems which is always nice to read.

The illustrations were done by John Steptoe and they are all black and white. It does not say what kind of medium his used but by looking at the images it seems to have been done by pencil or ink. I think that by having the images all be black and white it allows for the words to have more meaning and attention on them.