Mrs. Brown on Exhibit

Mrs. Brown on Exhibit: and Other Museum Poems

Author: Susan Katz

Illustrator: R.W. Alley

Publishing Company: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Copyright Date: 2002

36 pages

Poetry Collection

          I was originally drawn to this book because it is unlike most other poetry collections I discovered. I found that most poetry books were not all that interesting for me to read, much less for children. Even though I know that this is most likely just due to the stigma poetry has, I believe poetry can be fun if done the right way.  Mrs. Brown on Exhibit is definitely the way to do this. This book is a fun-filled adventure through every possible exhibit imaginable at a museum. Mrs. Brown loves museums and her students love nothing more than to explore these museums with her. Throughout this book her students discover everything from insects to mummies. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who asks.

The illustrations in this book are beautifully done with watercolor. R.W. Alley’s work brings these different exhibits to life. The illustrations are both double-spread and on a single page. The text in this book is unique to its genre. As seen in most poetry collections, the poems stand on their own as each tells its own story. Therefore, there’s only one poem on most of the pages, while some of the smaller poems contain two to a page. But even with that said, throughout the majority of the book, there is  about as much text on a page as you would expect to see in a picture book of the same level.

I previously mentioned I really enjoyed this book. Therefore I would definitely use this book in my classroom. One of the first ways I saw an opportunity for using this book would be through an in-class field trip. Not many elementary classrooms I know of are able to attend field trips to museums. Therefore I feel like this would be a great way to bring the museum to my students. The second way I thought this book could be incorporated into the classroom would be through each section's topic as an introductory reading to a lesson. For example, the “Giant Heart” section introduces many great aspects of the heart that could be easily expanded upon in a science lesson on the topic. The third and final way I think I would use this book in my classroom would be in a poetry unit. This book includes many different fun poems that I think would get students interested in poetry. With use of any of these ways, I feel that this would be a great book to use in any classroom.