Small Reads for Brighters Days
Happy Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) You guys, I have so missed you! I hope you’re all well, and I’m excited to start catching up on all I’ve missed over the past month or two. We’re still getting settled in, but I’m going to try picking back up my Poetry Friday […]
We’ve just moved–third time in five years. I’m exhausted, and I don’t know where anything is! Since I read so many books, I largely rely on library books (and novels are usually on Kindle) to feed my habit. But there are still those owned, physical books that must come with me. They’re old friends. A […]
Happy Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) Thanks for all your empathy and sharing last week when I shared a poem about sad books. You guys are the best. This week, I’m sharing another poem written for BookSpeak, but this one is actually in the book! This poem’s also in a […]
Happy Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) I wished you a happy day, but the truth is, I’ve been feeling a bit down. I tend to be relentlessly optimistic and generally feel grateful and content. And here’s the thing. Although my career, like most writers’ is taking a beating with the pandemic, […]
March 2 is Read Across America Day! Here’s a poem to start off your storytime. When I read this poem with kids, I act out the poem using simple motions that they can mimic. Give it a try! Calling All Readers I’ll tell you a story. I’ll spin you a rhyme. I’ll spill some ideas— […]
Last week, school librarian Karen Bentall shared a wonderful photo of a BookSpeak display in the Oak Ridge Elementary School library in Arlington, VA. Wow! It’s beautiful! I asked if I could share this cool artwork here and if she could tell me a little more about it. Here’s what Karen said: Smart […]
Yesterday, I was sharing the opening poem of BookSpeak! and how it came to be the opening poem. Well, last week was my birthday, and Randy, my husband, and I were spending a few days up on the North Shore of Lake Superior–one of my favorite places in the whole world! We had just parked […]
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about working on the opening to my next picture book. I still haven’t heard if the opening I submitted will fly or not, but I thought I’d follow up here and share a couple of openings written after the fact. A lot of times, the meat of the […]
Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers series. Tip #16: Add sound effects. Have kids make sound effects appropriate to the poem. Kids love being sound effects experts, and it give pre-readers, especially, a great way to be part of a poem reading when they don’t actually know the poem yet. […]
I had a lovely surprise when the presenters at an IRA session performed one of my poems! The session was The Power of Poetry to Provide Teachable Moments, and the presenters had no idea I was in the audience (until my friend Janet Fagal told them afterward). Here they are: Diane Bottomley, Ph.D,? plays the […]
