This Is Just to Say

I'll be the first to admit I was really skeptical about reading a poetry book. So I picked This Is Just to Say because it was really short and I thought I would just be able to read it and be done. But I actually ended up kind of liking it. It's split into two parts, the first is poems of apologies to people, and the second is the responses to these apologies. The poems were written by the kids of Mrs. Merz's class in a school in New York. I liked the poems because they were all so different. There's one about dodge ball, but then there is also one about how hard it is for a boy to live up to his mother's expectations. There was also a poem to an unknown boy from a girl named Raneesha, and the response was from one of Raneesha's friends and it said how awesome she was and I thought that was really cute. My favorite poem and response was The Black Spot. The Black Spot is by a girl named Alyssa to her sister Carrie, and she is just saying sorry for stabbing her sister with a pencil. The lead left a little black scar in her palm. I liked it because of Carrie's response, it says, "Roses are red, violets are blue, I am still really pissed off at you."