Small Reads for Brighters Days
It’s the last day of National Poetry Month, and I’ve had a great time browsing through some of my favorite poetry books to share excerpts with you throughout the month. Since I’ve been on the road a lot, I haven’t really done any blog reading lately, so for me, May will be my month of […]
Linda Ashman is such a lovely writer. In prose, she manages to pack so much into so few words, and that goes far toward explaining why her poems are fantastic. Stella, Unleashed: Notes from the Doghouse (Sterling, 2008, illustrated by Paul Meisel) is a rollicking collection of poems written from a dog’s point of view. […]
I just read Marilyn Singer‘s fantastic new picture book, Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse (Dutton, 2010, stunningly illustrated by Josee Masse). Oh! Marilyn has invented a new kind of poem, the reverso. Take a poem, place the lines in reverse order, fiddle with the punctuation and capitalization, and make a brand new […]
Yesterday’s poem featured spiders in a rather unappetizing way. So for today’s poem, I’ve chosen a beautiful spider poem from Sweet Dreams of the Wild: Poems for Bedtime (Wordsong, 1996–illustrated by Katharine Dodge). Rebecca Kai Dotlich is one of my favorite poets–and a lovely person as well, and this book, her first children’s poetry book, has […]
I was a guest at Jama Rattigan’s Alphabet Soup on Saturday–hope you’ll stop by to check out my poem and recipe! Moving Day (Wordsong, 2006, illustrated by Jennifer Emery), by Ralph Fletcher, is an unusual form. It’s kind of like an illustrated novel in verse for the elementary set. It’s only 23 poems or so, but […]
It was so fun to meet Douglas Florian in person at TLA last week! He had the librarians in stitches with his wry and speedy recitations of his poems. Here’s one of my favorites from his newest collection, Poetrees (Beach Lane Books, 2010): Scribbly Gum The scribbly gum’s smooth gray barkHas lines where larvae left […]
Today is Day 4 of my week of school visits in southwestern Minnesota, and today I get to spend ALL day at one school. It’s a luxury! One thing I love to emphasize with kids is the fun of reading poetry aloud. Check out Marilyn Singer’s recent article that talks about this for School […]
One of the really cool things about the TLA conference last week was meeting several new (to me) poets. I loved hearing Leslie Bulion‘s funny, scientifically accurate, and gross poems about bugs–all from her book Hey There, Stink Bug! (Charlesbridge, 2006–with cool illustrations by Leslie Evans). Here’s one she read that really got the […]
I love books that combine poetry with nonfiction, and Toad by the Road (Henry Holt, 2007) is a great example of that. Joanne Ryder wrote the poems and Maggie Kneen did the lovely, detailed illustrations. Here’s one of my favorites: Zap, Zap My tongue is a tool–Far better than most–For catching my breakfast,Though I […]
Texas was wonderful! I’ll share a bit more about the Texas Library Association conference and my trip later on, once I have time to breathe. Saturday night was the awards ceremony for the Minnesota Book Awards. Stampede didn’t win, but I was so honored just to have it named as a Finalist. I always kinda thought it […]
