Our 5th Poetry Slam will celebrate the spoken word with an opportunity for our community schools to send us their wittiest and wisest wordsmiths to compete for the title of Poet Laureate and to shine a light on their school’s rhyming rep. Each school that chooses to participate can have a school or class competition to select up to two poets to represent them in our battle of the bards. We are looking for up to two word lovers per school, ages 7 – 14, to recite their original poem, rap, lyric, haiku, verse, sonnet, or other word collection. Each schools’ selected poets will get three minutes to recite or rap a poem or lyric they’ve written.

We will select two Poet Laureate winners, judged on poem content and performance, to receive a $25 Children’s Book World gift certificate and a visit to their school from one of our judges, Hope Anita Smith or Chris Harris. All other participating poets will receive $5 gift certificates. Call, come in, or send an email to cbwchildrensbooks@gmail.com to sign your school up to be represented.

We will select two Poet Laureate winners, judged on poem content and performance, to receive a $25 Children’s Book World gift certificate and a visit to their school from one of our judges, Hope Anita Smith or Chris Harris. All other participating poets will receive $5 gift certificates. Call, come in, or send an email to cbwchildrensbooks@gmail.com to sign your school up to be represented.

Our judges, two time Coretta Scott King Award winning poet Hope Anita Smith and Chris Harris, who has been called the 21st-century Shel Silverstein, will be signing their books: Smith’s My Daddy Rules the World: Poems about Dads, and Harris’ I’m Just No Good at Rhyming: And Other Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups