TOPAZ HORIZON: Book Review: Nanay and the Moon by Elyrah L. Salanga-Torralba

Sunday, October 06, 2024

Book Review: Nanay and the Moon by Elyrah L. Salanga-Torralba

If you'd like to expose your children to more poetry, then here's a book you should try. Nanay and the Moon by Elyrah L. Salanga-Torralba. Elyrah is a lovely writer and her honesty and wit come through in her book of poetry for children. Before I share with you a couple of my favorites, let's quickly go through the reasons why parents should read poetry to their children.

Any book lover knows that reading to children offers a wealth of benefits, not just as an emotional bonding experience but also adds greatly to their intellectual development. I noticed that when I read poems to my kids, they enjoyed them a lot. So here's very quickly why we parents should make poetry a part of our children’s reading experience:

1. Helps our kids with language development. That means a bigger vocabulary, exposure to playful language, and an awareness of sounds and rhythm.

2. Improves their listening and concentration skills. This is obviously spoken poetry. And poetry really must be read aloud anyway. Our kids learn active listening. Kids these days need to learn this!

3. Enhances their imagination (and parents' too!). Poetry often uses vivid imagery which makes kids use their imagination. It helps them visualize what's happening and feel emotions in a way that prose doesn’t always provide. So hello, creativity!

4. Encourages critical thinking. How??? Poems have metaphors and symbolism so our kids think beyond literal meanings and dive deeper into the words to discover what they really mean.

5. Helps them express emotions better. We all know the power of a song, right? When we're in love, heartbroken, happy, grieving. Poetry does the same for our kids, especially those who are discovering new feelings they don't have words for yet.

So try to squeeze poetry into your child’s life. It can unlock creativity, nurture emotional intelligence, and build a strong foundation for literacy skills—all while creating enjoyable bonding moments!

So now let me share with you my favorite poems from Nanay and the Moon:

So funny! But that ending is ouch! The kids will find this hilarious while we parents can use this as a teaching moment to remind them to keep the house clean so that we don't suffer the terrorism of ipis!

I love how this poem says that we mommies are storytellers. We have so many stories and I spend a lot of time just chatting with my boys and they're spellbound. We're the ones who teach our kids language, emotions, culture, moral lessons, spirituality. What a beautiful responsibility!

Nanay and the Moon is full of simple language that many children can grasp. They're easy to read aloud - no hard-to-pronounce word here! The poems are short, too, so you can be sure your kids won't fall asleep (well, depending on the age of your child, try to do 1-3 poems per session).

Congratulations, Elyrah, on your book!

Purchase Nanay and the Moon by Elyrah L. Salanga-Torralba here:
UP Press
Lazada
Shopee

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I review books written by Filipinos. If you're a mom, I'll prioritize it!