

A Song About Myself
Spring 2017 PoetryIn a letter sent to his sister while traveling through Scotland, English romantic poet John Keats included a light, humorous rhyme that he wrote simply for her amusement, calling it "A Song About Myself." Acclaimed Caldecott Medal illustrator Chris Raschka (The Hello, Goodbye Window by Norton Juster, "A Ball for Daisy") frames the text about a "naughty," traveling, poetry-writing, ever-wondering boy as a three-part saga. Whimsical watercolor depictions of characters and settings move with playfulness and verve across, over, and under horizontal bars of colors stretching across the white pages and culminating in arrows pointing toward more adventures to come. Raschka ends with an interesting note about the poem's context and Keats' life.