New book focuses on favorite poems

Beginning work a few years ago on her latest book, an anthology of poems for young people, Caroline Kennedy found herself looking through one of her mother's scrapbooks. She burst into laughter, she said, as she came across a poem that her brother John Jr., as a youngster, had picked out and copied as a gift to their poetry-loving mom.

The poem "brought back memories of our relationship", Kennedy told a bookstore audience this week. "I laughed so hard."

But for Kennedy, now 55 and a mother of three grown children, there's a deeper meaning to that irreverent ditty. Poetry was a central part of her home life growing up. She and her brother regularly copied out and illustrated poems for their mother, Jackie, upon birthdays and Mother's Days.

Now, with her 10th book, the daughter of assassinated president John Kennedy wants to share with young readers the love for the written word that she feels her poetry-filled childhood helped instill in her (even though her own son, she quips, hates reading and only likes two poems). Hence the title: Poems to Learn By Heart.

AP

(China Daily 04/03/2013 page10)