Watching Ants, Commitment, A New Box of Crayons, and Lines from Underground are all collections of poems that offer a solid foundation upon which to build an effective affective language arts curriculum. Arden G. Thompson developed and taught the New Horizons Gifted/Talented Program in Wiscasset, Maine public schools for 27 years and then went on to teach the Excel Program in Thomaston, Cushing, and Tenants Harbor, Maine. For twelve summers she taught the Microcosmos Strand at the University of Connecticut's Confratute - an intense summer program attended by teachers and parents of gifted and talented students from all over the world. Her first book of collected poems, Watching Ants, was created at the request of Irving Sato, Director of the National/State Leader Training Institute on the Gifted and Talented, Ventura, California in 1989. The words are clear, penetrating, and immediately understandable by readers from six to ninety-six. You understand because you have been there. The author is the singer, but these are your songs.