written by Lee Bennett Hopkins
illustrated by Philip Stanton
Greenwillow, 2006
ISBN 9780060556013

The cover flap reads: “Geography is more than maps and globes, more than latitude and longitude lines, more than continents, oceans, islands and your own neighborhood. It isn’t just about finding your way. It’s the jumping off point for dreams and imagination.” That is an apt description of the poems Lee Bennett Hopkins has selected for Got Geography! In Patrick Lewis’ poem Mapping the World he observes that “geography is like our own / room with a view we can’t forget.” Global warming is an issue we hear about every day. “The earth is unsettled/ever in motion/a global dance” (Awesome Forces, Joan Bransfield Graham). Students studying geography get a good introduction in Rebecca Kai Dotlich’s The wonder of… and Francisco X. Alarcón takes us to an island in his bilingual poem Island/Isla.

Philip Stanton’s detailed graphite pencil illustrations jump to life with watercolor, acrylic and graphite crayon details and the colors splash across the page. He is a well-known illustrator in Europe but this is his first publication in the USA.

“Maps are the keys/to secret places/vast new worlds/and unknown faces”. (A Map and a Dream by Karen O’Donnell Taylor). Got Geography! offers a variety of poems that are perfect jumping off points to learn about the world and our place in it.

— Heidi Grosch