poetryaction to Super Sniffers, by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent

My little nonfiction book group is talking about some of Dorothy Hinshaw Patent’s books today, and one I read and loved was Super Sniffers: Dog Detectives on the Job. Very. Cool. Nonfiction. Book.

 

Super Sniffers

I decided to do a poetryaction for it, and at first I was going to write about what it must be like to be a military sniffing dog and parachute into places! (The pictures in this book are fabulous!) But then I thought about my own dog, Captain Jack Sparrow. I wrote a zeno about what job he might have. The pickin’s were slim, I’m telling you:>) His useful skills are quite limited. He’s good at cuddling, though!

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I’ve been doing something new. After reading a picture book, sometimes I jot down a quick poem based on something in the book. It could be inspired by the entire book, the setting, a character, or even just a tiny detail in a picture or a single phrase from the text. I’m using picture books as a jumping off point for poems. I thought this might be something interesting for you to do in your classroom, so I’m going to share some of them here.

 

20 Responses

  1. Laura,
    Your poem is hilarious! I hope you send it out for publication. Every child needs to read this one.

    1. Thanks, Linda. Most children’s magazines won’t take submissions of anything published on a blog. So…I’ll just have to hope teachers share it with their students:>)

      1. Laura,
        Too bad most magazines won’t publish poems from blogs. Mostly adults read blogs, not kids. Are you able to publish poems that are posted on a blog in a book of poems? Only self-published books?

        1. I did notice a few months ago that the lovely and wonderful poet Amy Ludwig VanDerwater had removed a number of poems from her Poem Farm because they were going to be included in books, I believe. I have a feeling if you had a fabuloso collection of poems and had shared one or two online, a publisher might be fine with that. Especially if your online presence was such a terrific platform for your work, like Amy’s is. Or it could even be that editors who loved Amy’s work looked at her poems online and said, “I love this! We could build a whole collection around it!” I’m not sure. Once these books come out using a few poems that first appeared on her blog, maybe she’ll share the backstory:>)

  2. Laura,
    Your poem is hilarious! I hope you send it out for publication. Every child needs to read this one.

    1. Thanks, Linda. Most children’s magazines won’t take submissions of anything published on a blog. So…I’ll just have to hope teachers share it with their students:>)

      1. Laura,
        Too bad most magazines won’t publish poems from blogs. Mostly adults read blogs, not kids. Are you able to publish poems that are posted on a blog in a book of poems? Only self-published books?

        1. I did notice a few months ago that the lovely and wonderful poet Amy Ludwig VanDerwater had removed a number of poems from her Poem Farm because they were going to be included in books, I believe. I have a feeling if you had a fabuloso collection of poems and had shared one or two online, a publisher might be fine with that. Especially if your online presence was such a terrific platform for your work, like Amy’s is. Or it could even be that editors who loved Amy’s work looked at her poems online and said, “I love this! We could build a whole collection around it!” I’m not sure. Once these books come out using a few poems that first appeared on her blog, maybe she’ll share the backstory:>)

  3. Laura, your poem is right on. It brings to mind the first neighbor (now deceased) to welcome us when we moved into our home almost 18 years ago. He always said that his dogs were “shopping the classifieds.”

  4. Laura, your poem is right on. It brings to mind the first neighbor (now deceased) to welcome us when we moved into our home almost 18 years ago. He always said that his dogs were “shopping the classifieds.”

  5. this is so funny and I didn’t know that blog poem couldn’t be published in mag

    1. Most (but not all) magazines want unpublished poems, and most consider being on a blog to be published, because it’s out there, available for anyone to look at. Which is a bummer, since hardly anyone sees them, but that’s the way it works.

  6. this is so funny and I didn’t know that blog poem couldn’t be published in mag

    1. Most (but not all) magazines want unpublished poems, and most consider being on a blog to be published, because it’s out there, available for anyone to look at. Which is a bummer, since hardly anyone sees them, but that’s the way it works.

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