Small Reads for Brighters Days
Deborah Freedman’s By Mouse & Frog made me think about the old adage of opposites attract, and how so often kids are indeed friends
Happy Fourth of July! I’m sharing a poem today by Rebecca Kai Dotlich, from her wonderful book, Lemonade Sun?(Wordsong, 2001).? I could take or leave fireworks, for the most part, but this poem makes an explosion in my brain–a beautiful, noisy, poetic burst. When I first started reading children’s poetry, I made little photo albums […]
Happy National Poetry Month! Thanks for dropping by my Poem Starter Video party. Today’s poem comes from?Grumbles from the Forest: Fairy-Tale Voices with a Twist?(WordSong, 2013), by Rebecca Kai Dotlich and Jane Yolen. I’ll tell you a secret. I have an unpublished collection of fairy tale-related poems, and they were rejected by WordSong. In fact, […]
What Can a Crane Pick Up? by Rebecca Kai Dotlich ill by Mike Lowery Knopf, 2012 Rebecca Kai Dotlich is one of my favorite children’s poets! When Riddles Come Rumbling, Sweet Dreams of the Wild, and In the Spin of Things are a few of my favorites of hers. And recently, Bella and Bean, a […]
Sharing the Seasons, one of Lee Bennett Hopkins’ several wonderful 2010 anthologies, is a Cybils Finalist and one of my favorite poetry books of the year. It explores all the seasons, and after a cross-country ski outing this morning, I need to share a lovely poem from the Winter section. Winter Home We build our […]
This week, I wanted to choose a poem for my daughter, Maddie. She was at camp a few weeks ago, and she loved it so much that this week she’s back there as a S.W.E.A.T. That stands for a lot of really nice stuff, but the reality is she’s doing a lot of grunt work. […]
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 […]
All week, I’ve been sharing school-themed poetry books I love. And of course, I couldn’t leave out School Supplies, a Lee Bennett Hopkins anthology. Here are just a couple of the poems I love from this book: Homework It rustles itshifts with no windin the room tomove itListen!the blank whitepaperneeds your attention.–by Barbara Juster […]
Did you see the lovely essay in the new SCBWI Bulletin by Diane L. Burns about shaking hands with someone who shook the hand of…It reminded me of this wonderful experience I just had of the chain of encouragement and joy poets build. When I saw poet Tracie Vaughn Zimmer in May, she related […]
I have to admit I was sad when I heard Rebecca Kai Dotlich’s next book was a prose picture book–she’s one of my very favorite poets, and I want more, more, more poetry from her! But one read of Bella & Bean (ill. by Aileen Leitjen), and I fell in love. Word-hungry Bella and action-hungry […]
