Real Poems by Fictional Children

I'm embarrassed to admit that when I first picked up This Is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness, I wasn't sure if the children who'd allegedly written the poems were real or not!  The fact that the book was written and not edited by Joyce Sidman should have tipped me off, but I was a little slow on the uptake.  While I was a little disappointed to realize that the children poets of the book are all fictional, the poems themselves are wonderful.  A set of apology poems paired with responses (although, oddly and inconveniently, the apologies are responses are not on facing pages but all the apologies are in a section at the front of the book, followed by all the responses), the poems ring true.  Based on the famous William Carlos Williams poem of the title, the subjects range from dodgeball injuries to sibling rivalry, to parental neglect.  Some are sincerely apologetic; others are not.  And not all the offenders are forgiven.  My 6-year-old loved this book, as did I.  It would be great to read it with real kids and then challenge them to write their own apology and response poems.