This course is designed to assist teachers and librarians in selecting, evaluating, and encouraging the informed enjoyment of poetry written for children and young adults in the twentieth century. The semester will cover a variety of poetic forms, including ballads, haiku, and lyrics, a comparison of anthologies published in the past three decades, African-American poetry, the children's poetry by noted poets such as Richard Wilbur, Randall Jarell, Theodore Roethke and Robert Graves, among other aspects of poetry. Assignments will include readings, developing lesson plans and/or web pages to support poetry in the curriculum, illustrating a poem and significant participation in a web-based discussion. While the coursework will not privilege any specific ideological/critical methodology, it will teach and require familiarity with a broad vocabulary of basic terms and poetic devices.