Small Reads for Brighters Days
Happy Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) I love Nikki Grimes’ work. Before my very first poetry collection was acquired, I attended the big national SCBWI conference in L.A. in 2006. I attended a session by Nikki on how to organize a poetry collection. She offered up so much insight, and, following […]
Happy Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) I recently read Nikki Grimes’ Ordinary Hazards. This young adult memoir in verse comes out October 8 and is by turns harrowing and hopeful. Nikki has always been such a smart, strong poet and woman–it was both painful and illuminating to read about her childhood, […]
You guys know Michelle Heidenrich Barnes’ Ditty of the Month Challenge, right? Where a poet issues a challenge based on a topic or form or writing process? (My challenge was water poems–last year.) This month, Michelle spotlighted fabulous poet Nikki Grimes, who issued a challenge to turn a word INTO a poem with wordplay. I […]
Words with Wings by?Nikki Grimes Wordsong/Boyds Mills, 2013 I shared a poem from this book for Poetry Friday.? I love that this poem is all about the power of words. In the very first line, poet Nikki Grimes says “Say the word…” [boldface added]. It’s not the actual snowflake itself that makes the narrator experience […]
view cop(R(.I shared a poem from Nikki Grimes’ wonderful?Words with Wings?(Wordsong, 2013) here before, and today, I’m sharing another in celebration of the Coretta Scott King Honor this book just won! Woohoo! There is nothing I like more than seeing fantastic writers and books and (of course) poetry getting some awards love:>) . There are […]
Today’s poem comes from Nikki Grimes’ most recent work of excellent poetry. In Words with Wings, Gabby, an outsider and daydreamer, finds a way to make her daydreaming work for her with the help of a fantastic teacher. Here’s one of my favorites: Nothing New One or two hellos greet me at the classroom door. […]
Happy National Poetry Month! Thanks for dropping by my Poem Starter Video party. Today’s poem comes from?The Poetry Friday Anthology (Common Core K-5 edition): Poems for the School Year with Connections to the Common Core (Pomelo, 2013), edited by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong.?It’s one of my favorite?anthologies to recommend to teachers because of its […]
Nikki Grimes’ Dyamonde Daniel books (Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel is the first; Rich, the second, is out; and the third, Almost Zero, comes out in September) have gotten tons of great buzz, so maybe you’re way ahead of me in reading them! Saturday morning, I got up early to grocery shop. I was having […]
Nikki Grimes’ latest picture book, Voices of Christmas (Zonderkidz, 2009), is one of those books that makes me go, Why hasn’t someone done this before? It’s a collection of poems that together tell the story of the birth of Christ. Each spread introduces the character with a Bible quotation and then presents a poem from […]
