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National Poetry Month Kickoff!

Educators, it’s almost April! I’m excited on two counts: 1) My new book, Water Can Be…, publishes tomorrow! I’m still creating educator materials for it, but you can find reviews, my first teaching guide, and a bunch of videos (both book trailers and content videos) here on my site. 2) I’ll be sharing a riddle-ku

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Ribs [15 words or less]

? Photo: Laura Salas Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)! I’ve been taking pictures lately for my National Poetry Month Riddle-ku feature, and here’s one of my rejects!?Here are?3 things this photo makes me think of: 1) a tree in winter 2) an x‑ray of?my ribs 3) the batik

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Slow Jets [15 words or less]

Photo: Laura Salas Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)! For Christmas, we gave our nephew a glow in the dark ant farm, and the ants finally arrived last month during a “warm spell” (aka above freezing). Nifty!?Here are?3 things this photo makes me think of: 1)??the contrails from jets

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Water Can Be...

WATER CAN BE… Video #3 (The Water Cycle) and a Teaching Guide

Sharing another video this week. This one isn’t a trailer for Water Can Be…, but a quick video I hope educators might find useful. And here’s a classroom guide. Lots of ideas there for your unit about water, which I’m excited about. I’ll also be creating a CCSS-referenced reading guide and a set of activity

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Behind the Glass [15 words or less]

Photo: Laura Salas Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)! On our plane ride home from Florida Sunday, I was behind this girl wearing her doll in a backpack. I was half amazed and half horrified. How cool! How creepy!?Here are?3 things this photo makes me think of: 1)??a sarcophagus

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Natl. Poetry Month Sneak Peek: Riddle-Ku!

I’m excited about April, National Poetry Month! I can’t remember if I’ve ever done an original poem a day for April, but that’s what I’m going to do this time. I’m going to be sharing some riddle haiku–or riddle-ku. I know. Riddle-kulous, right? Anyway, I wanted to give you a peek at what I’ll be

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“Pure Imagination,” by Roald Dahl [Poetry Friday]

view cop(R(. Today, I’m appearing in my first post at TeachingAuthors.com, where I’ll be a temporary member-whee! My post is about writing rituals, and I mention Roald Dahl over there, so I thought I’d share a Dahl poem here. As with his other writing forms, Dahl was by turns funny, sly, subversive, beautiful–and almost always

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Cock-a-Doodle-Doo [15 words or less]

Photo: Laura Salas Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)! When Randy and I went up to the North Shore (of Lake Superior, in Minnesota) last month, this is one of the oversized side-of-the-road things we saw. There was also a Voyageur whose odd wardrobe and color choices made it

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WATER CAN BE… Trailer #2 (Family-Style!)

Excited that Water Can Be… got a lovely review in this month’s Booklist: Like its predecessor, A Leaf Can Be … (2012), this picture book explores an aspect of the natural world in a way that is imaginative but ultimately informative. A fine choice for reading aloud in the classroom or at home. ? Carolyn

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“Ocean Tales,” by Laura Purdie Salas, pt. 2

Usually in this feature, I share my process as a reader reading a poem someone else wrote. But for this one, I’m sharing the writing process behind a poem I shared last week on Poetry Friday, “Ocean Tales.” I was working on a set of poems that eventually became BOOKSPEAK! POEMS ABOUT BOOKS (Clarion, 2011),

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“Ocean Tales,” by Laura Purdie Salas [Poetry Friday]

view cop(R(. I’m sharing an unpublished poem today, one I originally wrote as part of the collection that became BookSpeak! Poems About Books (Clarion, 2011).? I hope you like it! Ocean Tales Each book is a drop in an ocean of choices, A glimpse of a maybe that someday might be. A watery world full

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Ghostly [15 words or less]

Photo: Laura Salas Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)! This was?a cool scene during a color guard winter show recently.?Here are?3 things this photo makes me think of: 1)? The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (anyone remember that old movie?) 2)? a butterfly?eager to break out of its cocoon

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WATER CAN BE… Trailer #1

Yikes! My pub date (April 1) for Water Can Be… (Millbrook) is fast approaching! I’m thrilled that the book got a starred review from Kirkus, and I’ve been working on a set of five different short videos for it. Two are basic trailers, one focuses on WaterAid and global water issues, one is about the

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Lobster [15 words or less]

Photo: Laura Salas Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)! This was part of some wall art at The Smack Shack in Minneapolis, made, according to the server, by making molds of real lobsters. Ick.?Here are?3 things this photo makes me think of: 1)’dentures 2)?the plaster handprints kids make for

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