Gettin' the Groove On: Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat, edited by Nikki Giovanni

Poetry has it roots in song and dance and the natural rhythms of hands and feet and voice, and editor Nikki Giovanni's Hip Hop Speaks to Children with CD: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat (A Poetry Speaks Experience) captures these qualities in her new anthology of African American poetry, song, rap, and rhythm.

This work, featuring fifty-one contributors and illustrated by five artists, includes celebrated poets from the Harlem Renaissance to modern times--W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Grimes, Walter Dean Myers, Lucille Clifton, and of course Giovanni herself. But there are also creations by those not thought of as poets at all, hip hop and rap performers such as Tupac Shakur, Mos Def, and Queen Latifah. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is also included for its poetic use of language.

In addition to the printed words of these artists, this volume is particularly outstanding for its archival compact disc of the poets reading their own works, such as Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and both King's original delivery and Giovanni's moving performance of the well-known portion of King's "I have a Dream."

A natural for Poetry Month and a New York Times bestseller also named a ALA Booklist's Top Ten Art Books, this volume belongs in every school and public library for its archival recordings of noted poets now gone and the toe-tapping inspirations of popular artists now writing and performing.

The companion book to Hip Hop Speaks to Children with CD: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat (A Poetry Speaks Experience) with its own historic CD, is Poetry Speaks to Children (Book & CD) (Read & Hear).