I often don’t like picture books that teach overt lessons. But this one was lovely, and I wanted to work the main point, the lesson, into my poetryaction. Check out my Pinterest boards of poetryactions and bookalikes if you’d like to see more:>)  

  I was excited to share on Wednesday about Water Can Be… making it onto the Charlotte Zolotow Award Highly Commended list. And one of the reasons it’s such an honor is because of the OTHER books loved by the award committee. Katherine Applegate’s Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla earned […]

    The author uses a LOT of alliteration in this book–and I’m a fan of alliteration, but there were so many “s” sounds and words that I tried to avoid them in my poetryaction. Fail. All I really did was swap out “s” for “sh,” I fear. Oh, well. Fun book, and I had […]

  I don’t usually remember specific plot points of books. Instead, I tend to remember flashes of small moments, images that, if a book is really powerful, come back to mind at seemingly random times. Caminar, which I just read, and Red Midnight, which I read quite a few years ago, both have scenes that […]

Happy Poetry Friday! Maybe you overindulged yesterday and can relate to this book. I personally have a brickle hangover. And Captain Jack got sick yesterday and guess who was on clean-up duty. Yup, me. Ugh. Anyway…   We’ve all been the kid or sat next to the kid or been teaching the kid who barfed […]

  They’re back! I loved Zebra and Moose in Z Is for Moose, and now they’re back in another adventure! —————————————————————————————————————————– Poetryaction: 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 […]