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Riddle-Ku! [merry-go-round]

  Riddle-Ku of the Day This merry-go-round spins upside down: I’m singing the room full of breeze ? –Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved ? HINT 1:   HINT 2:     . TITLE (AND ANSWER): CEILING FAN   [Educators, please click here to see a roundup of the entire month’s riddle-ku and also to

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Riddle-Ku! [pencil crop]

  Riddle-Ku of the Day I’m a pencil crop writing love notes on the ground– erasing the sky –Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved ? HINT 1:   HINT 2:     TITLE (AND ANSWER): FOREST   [Educators, please click here to see a roundup of the entire month’s riddle-ku and also to get suggestions

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Riddle-Ku! [metal snake]

  Riddle-Ku of the Day I’m a metal snake whose flickering silver tongue bites into your lunch –Laura Purdie Salas, all rights reserved ? HINT 1:   HINT 2: TITLE (AND ANSWER): FORK   [Educators, please click here to see a roundup of the entire month’s riddle-ku and also to get suggestions for using these

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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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