Creatures of Earth, Sea, and Sky

by Georgia Heard, Jennifer Owings Dewey (Illustrator)

A collection of short poems features such creatures as baboons, bears, eagles, bats, dragonflies, and frogs, illustrated in full-color. By the author of For the Good of the Earth and Sun.

Genres: Poetry, Picture Books, Childrens

32 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Georgia Heard is the NCTE 2023 Excellence in Poetry for Children Award Winner which honors an American poet for their aggregate work for children. She is the author of many children’s books including her most recent Welcome to the Wonder House, (co-authored with Rebecca Kai Dotlich), My Thoughts Are Clouds: Poems for Mindfulness, and Boom! Bellow! Bleat!: Animal Poems for Two Or More Voices.
She received her M.F.A. in poetry writing from Columbia University. She is a founding member of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project in New York City. Currently, she visits schools in the United States and around the world teaching writing and poetry. She is the author of Heart Maps: Helping Students Create and Craft Authentic Writing and a new edition of Awakening the Heart.
-from georgiaheard.com

Reviews

[Alexandra Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this poetry book because of the information in the poems. I feel like children would love reading poems from this picture book because it is about animals. I've done a little research on this author, and many of her pieces share that same theme with nature. The illustrator, Jennifer Owings Dewey drew the pictures with colored pencils, as it says in the copyright page. The illustrations are realistic and colorful, but there aren't very many background illustrations, leaving quite a bit of white space.

There is one specific poem, Frog Serenade, that I enjoy reading because of how interesting and different it is. It is a poem for two voices, with one voice only being frog sounds. The illustrations on this double spread are simply a frog jumping in motion over both pages.

[Kristin Munoz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creatures of Earth Sea is a poetry and Illustrations by Georgia Heard and Jennifer Owings Dewey. The theme of this story is about bears, eagle bats, baboon frogs, the natural world, and wildlife. This story is also a great picture book showing us the animals. I think this also informs the students about animals' nature and wildlife. I will have this book in my classroom library for my read-aloud.

[Molly Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains 18 poems and beautiful illustrations captured in colored pencil. It is a very soft-spoken book. The style of this book is animals, but each page represents a different animal. I also loved how this book shows many different forms of poetry, including poems 2 people read together. Although the audience of this book is for younger children, I think it is also fit for an older audience since this book is very mature in the emotions of it. These poems contain both first person point of view and third person point of view. I appreciate how this book contains not only a table of contents, but also an Index of Titles And First Lines, making it very accessible to find a poem. Pretty nice read!

[Madison Mueller · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Ruby-throated hummingbird zig-zags from morning glories to honeysuckle sipping honey from a straw all day long.” -Georgia Heard. Believe it or not, how I typed out that poem, the word structure is completely different than how the poem looks in the book. Creature of Earth, Sea, and Sky, has a mix of formal and informal arrangement style, I think it gives a poetic artistic look for the poems. The realistic pencil illustrations by Jennifer Owings Dewey are a visual aid for the readers when learning about the different wildlife. Learning about wildlife through poems is definitely unique compared to reading an insert from a National Geographic book.

[Victoria Petty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! The poetry in this book is beautiful but so are most books by Georgia Heard. This story takes a step further in describing the life of creatures who swim in water, walk on land, and fly through the sky. Jennifer Dewey did an amazing job of creating illustrations that go along with each poem. The illustrator uses colored pencils to capture the visual elements. Each page focuses on a different character and shares a snip of what their life is like. This is a great book to have in your library at home or in the classroom; the students will be thoroughly entertained by this book.

[Katy Mccormac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily accessible poems about the natural world with soft pencil drawings.

[Fibersian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This a book of beautiful poems about nature. They are short and very descriptive. These are not rhyming poems. They are for children but adults will enjoy the language. Georgia Herd uses interesting text shaping as can be done in poetry. This makes a nice connection to print awareness and noticing features of written text.

These poems can be acted out.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creatures of Earth, Sea, and Sky: Animal Poems (Paperback)
by Georgia Heard
a good collection of poems to show inference

[Gps · Rating 3 out of 5]

a thoughtful way to present poems, and good illustrations to accompany the poems about animals…
i just did not care that much for the poems…so found it disappointing in that respect

[Dominic Cifuni]

"Creatures of land, water, and sky are featured here in short poems for early readers". A wide variety of animals are brought to light in this child friendly book of poems. From baboons to dragonflies to elephants. Naturalist and illustrator Jennifer Dewey captures each animal in dramatic detail. These poems are fun for all audiences, and can be quite useful in the classroom. Students can then write their own poems about animals based on this text.we can even have students work in pairs; in which one writes the poem while the other illustrates.