Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror

Written by: Marilyn Singer

Illustrated by: Josée Masse

Dutton Children’s Books, 2010

28 pages

Poetry Book

This book is full of fairy tale poems written in reverso poetry form. Reversos are poems that can be read both up and down, and have different meanings in each direction. These narrative poems are appropriate for telling two sides of one story. My favorite poem in the book is The Sleeping Beauty and the Wide-Awake Prince. This reverso tells the story from Sleeping Beauty’s perspective and from the prince’s perspective. In The Doubtful Duckling, the duckling is dreaming of being a beautiful swan. Longing for Beauty is about Beauty and the Beast and how they love each other.

The illustrations look like they were done in watercolor. They are very colorful and detailed. Each poem has its own illustration on the opposite page. Each illustration is one picture, but you can see the line where the picture changes to represent both sides of the poem.

This book is appropriate for anyone to read, but probably appeals more to older children since it might be a little confusing to read. In the Language Arts classroom this would be a good book to teach students about different types of poetry and have them write and illustrate their own reverso poem.

This book has won many awards including: the Cybil Award in Poetry, New York Public Library’s 2010 Best 100 Children’s Books, 2010 Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books, Betsy Bird’s 100 Magnificent Children’s Books of 2010, Publishers Weekly’s Best Children’s Books of 2010, Booklist’s Editors’ Choice list, and Washington Post’s Top 15 Children’s Books of 2010. I love the creativity of Singer’s poems in Mirror Mirror. This is definitely a must read!