The Child Inside: Holiday Memories & Seasonal Poetry for Children

By Crystal Lee

The Child Inside is a delightful book of childhood stories and original poems, which span from the writer's childhood to her present life. It is a collection of nostalgic memories, followed by the poems that those memories inspired. The wonderful poetry and singsong style of each verse will enrapture children and keep them happy for hours. These narratives capture the imagination no matter the age of the reader, and the illustrations connect you in a special way to the places and characters these poems portray, whether they be a pair of naughty pumpkins or a little girl who lost her mittens playing in the snow. The engaging pages of this charming book carry readers from their own beds to neighborhood farms all the way to Santa's workshop. Each journey is fantastically told through recollections of youth and anecdotes, which are warm, familiar, and heartfelt. The sincere prose and exceptional verse contained within will make you want to read each one again and again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645840404

Book preview

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The Child Inside

Holiday Memories & Seasonal Poetry for Children

Crystal Lee

Copyright © 2019 Crystal Lee

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2019

ISBN 978-1-64584-039-8 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-64584-040-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Part I

Sounds of Autumn

Piece 3

Fee, Fie, Foe, Fumble!

Sounds of October

Tale of the Pumpkin Seed

Piece 7

Naughty Pumpkins

Piece 9

Happy Haunting Halloween

Piece 11

What I Did This Summer

Why I’m Tardy

Piece 14

Piece 15

Snow Day

Piece 17

Part II

The Hearts of Animals

Piece 20

The City Rooster

The Moose in My Backyard

Piece 23

The Un-stuck Duck

Piece 25

Return of the Duck

Piece 27

My Neighbor’s Horses

A Robin in the Rain

Robin in the Snow

The Heart of a Lion

Part III

The Child Inside

Piece 34

Susie’s Mittens

Piece 36

Grandma’s Dollies

Piece 38

The Child Inside

Piece 40

My Favorite Part of Me (Toes)

Daydreams

Piece 43

Brand New Crayons

Piece 45

No Magic

Part IV

It’s Christmas

Piece 49

My Christmas Card

The Christmas Clock

Piece 52

Piece 53

Application for an Elf

Piece 55

The Ugly Sweater

Piece 57

Sugar Cookies

Mama’s Gingerbread House

Candy, Candy Everywhere

Piece 61

Piece 62

Santa Is a Rock Star

It’s Christmas!

How Do You Suppose a Reindeer Can Fly?

Part I

Sounds of Autumn

"Today, we are going to write a poem," my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Reed, said to the class of antsy eight-year-old students.

My first thought was of Dr. Seuss. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. Then I wondered what would rhyme with, Roses are red, violets are blue… I didn’t know anything about writing a poem, nor did I have a clue what to write about. My sweating hands were shaking and panic was rising in me like an American flag on the fourth of July.

As if she were reading my mind, Mrs. Reed said in her high-pitched Minnie Mouse voice, Not to worry, I will tell you what we are going to write about. Relief swept over the room. We all let out a collective sigh filling the room with P, B & J scented air. After keeping us all in suspense for a few seconds, she announced, We are going to write about autumn.

My second thought was that Mrs. Reed was going to be reading twenty-three poems about brown and orange leaves. She instructed us to take out a pencil and piece of paper to write down ten things that autumn meant to each one of us. I began writing my list:

Brown leaves

Orange leaves

Raking leaves

One leaf, two leaves, brown leaf, orange leaf…

It didn’t work for me the way it worked for Dr. Seuss and his fish.

So I put my chin in my palm, resting my elbow on the desk to think. I thought about the months that make up autumn…September, October, November then I wrote down the obligatory holidays which corresponded with them.

Halloween pumpkins

Thanksgiving turkeys

I wrote these as two lines instead of one. I was up to five things already. I sat at the tiny desk in my small classroom and looked out the window. It was September 1973, the perfect time to be writing about the season that was fall. Then it hit me, like the light of a giant harvest moon, here I was at school so I could write that. What rhymes with school?

Back to school, cool, fool, tool…

And teachers

One teacher, two teachers, red teachers, blue teachers…

I smiled to myself as I wrote that thinking I was very clever. Then I thought about my mom baking pumpkin, chocolate-chip cookies and going on about Indian summer; so I wrote that down even though I didn’t know what Indian summer even was or what I might write about it.

Pumpkin-chocolate-chip cookies

Indian summer

I watched the leaves falling from the tree outside onto the grass and that made me think