When Mrs. Merz asks her sixth grade class to write poems of apology, they end up liking their poems so much that they decide to put them together into a book. Not only that, but they get the people to whom they apologized to write poems back.

In haiku, pantoums, two-part poems, snippets, and rhymes, Mrs. Merz’s class writes of crushes, overbearing parents, loving and losing pets, and more. Some poets are deeply sorry; some not at all. Some are forgiven; some are not. In each pair of poems a relationship, a connection, is revealed.

"Sidman (Song of the Waterboatman and Other Pond Poems) explains, via an introduction from one of the book's sixth-grade characters, that the poems contained in this often humorous and touching anthology were inspired by the title poem of apology, which was penned by William Carlos Williams. The student in Mrs. Merz's class who introduces the book explains that some of the students received answers to their 'sorry' poems. One pair of poems shares a spread and addresses a dodge ball exchange ('Sorry/ Reubs,/ for belting you/ as hard/ as I could/ in dodge ball/ I'd like/ to say/ I wouldn't/ do it again/ but I'd/ be lying'). But for most entries, unfortunately, in order to read the call-and-response in succession, readers must awkwardly flip from the first half of the book ('Apologies') to the second ('Responses'). Yet the poems successfully navigate the complicated terrain for those who seek forgiveness. In one especially moving poem, 'The Black Spot,' Alyssa tells her sister Carrie that the black spot of lead on Carrie's arm makes manifest the 'nugget of darkness' within Alyssa that propelled her to injure her sibling (Carrie's response conveys her enduring anger at Alyssa). Zagarenski's (Mites to Mastodons) inventive mixed-media illustrations brim with items found in a classroom: a dictionary entry on 'apology,' for instance, becomes part of a student's clothing, and white hole reinforcements resemble a character's stolen doughnuts. But the book's odd organization seems a missed opportunity to tie the well-wrought, corresponding poems together and reinforce the complex relationships between the characters. Ages 9-12." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

'Packed with the intensity of everyday pain and sorrow, kids and adults exchange the words that convey grief, delight, love and acceptance of themselves and others.'

'The poems successfully navigate the complicated terrain for those who seek forgiveness.'

In haiku, pantoums, two-part poems, snippets, and rhymes, Mrs. Merz's sixth-grade class writes of apology. Some poets are deeply sorry; some not at all. Some are forgiven; some are not. In each pair of poems a relationship, a connection, is revealed. Full color.

'Pamela Zagarenski creates sculptures and large paintings, as well as picturebooks. She divides her time between Stonington, Connecticut, and Prince Edward Island.Joyce Sidman is the author of The World According to Dog: Poems and Teen Voices, which was winner of the ASPCA Henry Bergh Children\'s Book Award for Poetry, a VOYA Poetry Pick, and a Bulletin of the Center for Children\'s Books Blue Ribbon winner. She teaches in the Minneapolis schools as a writer-in-residence and is the author of several other fine books of poetry. She lives in Wayzata, Minnesota.'