A Report from the Book Fair October 12, 2011

As I write this, two boys are looking at the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records and two girls are looking at novels which feature cupcakes on their pink covers. This moment is repeated many times during the day. It’s book fair week which is always a good time to see what’s capturing the attention of 2nd graders (snakes and dogs) and 5th graders (cupcakes and record breakers).

This is a “new” book fair for Inly. We are working with Book Fairs by Book Ends, a company which offers an “alternative” to the more commercially-driven Scholastic. Our students and parents are happy to try something new. The books are not based on TV programs, and happily, there is not one Twilight novel. In fact, now that I think about it, vampires appear only in the Halloween books.

Okay – this really happened. I was just interrupted from posting this because a student wanted to pay for her books. Here’s what she bought: It’s Raining Cupcakes by Lisa Schroeder and Katie and the Cupcake Cure by Coco Simon. Guess what I’m craving right now…

I’ve started my own pile (supporting the library!) and here’s what’s in it – so far:

Composed by Rosanne Cash (yes, they have books for adults too – and I am a big fan of Roseanne Cash)

Return to Sender by Julia Alvarez (a story about a family in Vermont who hires illegal Mexican farm workers. The reviews made me think this could be a good book for some of my middle school students to read.)

China: Land of Dragons and Emperors by Adeline Yen Mah (so much about China I don’t know – and feel like I should. I loved Mah’s book, Chinese Cinderella and didn’t know about this one until I saw it in the fair)

One Big Rain: Poems for Rainy Days compiled by Rita Gray (very excited about this. I don’t like rain, but love poems about rain)

Here’s a poem about fall – from Gray’s book:

The Mist and All by Dixie Wilson

I like the fall.

The mist and all.

I like the night owl’s

Lonely call.

And wailing sound

Of wind around.

I like the gray.

November day.

And bare, dead boughs

That coldly sway

Against my pane.

I like the rain.

I like to sit

And laugh at it-

And tend

My cozy fire a bit.

I like the fall -

The mist and all.

Odds and Ends June 5, 2011

It was a beautiful weekend here – and I had time to spend reading a few books on my nightstand. More on that later, but tonight….a few odds and ends that I’ve collected:

1. You’ve probably seen the posters for Mr. Popper’s Penguins starring Jim Carrey. It opens June 17. I love the book, but have been burned in the past when I get my hopes up about movie adaptations of novels. 

2. R.L. Stine, author of the fabulously successful Goosebumps series, has a book being published on July 5. It’s the First Day of School….Forever! It sounds like a book form of the movie, Groundhog Day!

3. The Poetry Foundation has named J. Patrick Lewis the new Poet Laureate. Lewis has written more than 50 books of poetry, but my personal favorite is A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme. Beautifully illustrated by Alison Jay, A World of Wonders encourages readers to “travel by poem,” and by the time they read the poems about exotic places around the world, they’ll be ready to get a passport.

Celebrating Poetry Month with a Poet! April 14, 2011

There’s no better way to celebrate poetry at a school than to let the students meet a ”real” poet – so we did just that. Yesterday, Paul Janeczko visited Inly and spent the day with our students talking about the importance of playing with words. He told them about poetry anthologies, encouraged them to keep a journal, and of course, signed his name on pieces of paper that had been ripped from their notebooks. As I watched one child walk away with her prize, I thought maybe it would be some kind of talisman, something to pin up on her bulletin board to look at and be reminded of the poet who told her that her words matter.

When Paul and I sat down to eat lunch, I was ready with my first question. “What,” I asked the creator of A Poke in the I and many other wonderful books, is your connection to Ohio?”  I don’t think he expected that one, but prior to his visit, I read that he had been a teacher in Ohio. As a person who loves Massachusetts, but is loyal to Ohio, I had to know more. As it turns out, Paul taught in a school in Parma, a suburb of Cleveland.  That’s different. Growing up in southern Ohio, Cleveland didn’t really seem like Ohio to me. It’s almost in Pennsylvania! 

The other thing I asked Paul was the “desert island” question. I know that asking some version of “what books/music would you take to a desert island?” is hardly original, but when I meet someone who reads a lot, I want to know what they like. Of course, I suppose these days you could bring an e-reader to the island, but that ruins the game. Anyway…if you land on a desert island and see Paul Janeczko sitting under the one tree that always appears in the cartoons, here’s what he’ll be reading:

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns

Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls

You might be thinking the same thing. The first three I expected. No surprises there. But the other two – wonderful books – but just not what I expected. I loved Paul’s reason for choosing them. Desert island days are probably long. You would experience different moods. You need to be prepared for them. 

While Paul was talking with kids in the library, it was pouring outside. Thunder, lightening, dark and gloomy. At first, it kind of bummed me out. But, as I sat there and listened to the rain and heard Paul talking with our students, I wouldn’t have traded the moment for a beautiful sunny day. It was poetic.

April Showers Bring – Poetry! April 3, 2011

 

National Poetry Month is only fifteen-years-old. For some reason, I thought it had been around much longer, but that’s a sign of a successful program. Focusing attention on the art of poetry during April is firmly is “institutionalized” in my mind which, I imagine, is just what the Academy of American Poets would want. And this year I get to celebrate Poetry Month by meeting one of my favorite poets in the whole world – Naomi Shihab Nye. She’s speaking at a conference I’m attending on Thursday, and this morning I put her books by the door (just a few days early) so I won’t forget to bring them for her to sign. Others might line up to meet Bono or Tom Brady, but I would wait patiently for hours to say hello to Naomi.

And it gets better – this month-long celebration.  On April 13, Paul Janeczko is visiting Inly. As I’ve written before, Paul is the editor of many wonderful poetry books for children.  Like many literature teachers, I rely on his books to help me introduce poetry to kids.  A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms, Paul’s 2005 collaboration with illustrator Chris Raschka, is the best resource for teaching poetry – the illustrations are fun and the explanations of various forms are excellent.  Janeczko’s introduction to concrete poetry, A Poke in the I, is one of my all-time favorites. 

This past winter, I taught a poetry unit in our middle school. Among other poems we read by Naomi Shihab Nye, was this one from her book, 19 Varieties of Gazelle. Of course, I brought figs in for the students to taste – real figs, not the kind inside of a Newton!

My Father and the Fig Tree

For other fruits, my father was indifferent.
He’d point at the cherry trees and say,
“See those? I wish they were figs.”
In the evening he sat by my beds
weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.
They always involved a figtree.
Even when it didn’t fit, he’d stick it in.
Once Joha¹ was walking down the road and he saw a fig tree.
Or, he tied his camel to a fig tree and went to sleep.
Or, later when they caught and arrested him, his pockets were full of figs.

At age six I ate a dried fig and shrugged.
“That’s not what I’m talking about! he said,
“I’m talking about a fig straight from the earth — gift of Allah! — on a branch so heavy it touches the ground.
I’m talking about picking the largest, fattest,
 sweetest fig
in the world and putting it in my mouth.”
(Here he’d stop and close his eyes.)

Years passed, we lived in many houses,
none had figtrees.
We had lima beans, zucchini, parsley, beets.
“Plant one!” my mother said.
but my father never did.
He tended garden half-heartedly, forgot to water,
let the okra get too big.
“What a dreamer he is. Look how many things he starts and doesn’t finish.”

The last time he moved, I got a phone call,
My father, in Arabic, chanting a song
I’d never heard. “What’s that?”
He took me out back to the new yard.
There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas,
a tree with the largest, fattest,
sweetest fig in the world.
“It’s a fig tree song!” he said,
plucking his fruits like ripe tokens,
emblems, assurance
of a world that was always his own.

The List by Naomi Shihab Nye February 3, 2011

I am reading poetry with my middle school students. The deeper we enter our poetic universe, the more sure I am that winter is the right season to explore poetry. There is over a foot of snow outside, the days are cold and often frustrating — for example, a very nice representative of AAA just left my house after he “extricated” my car from a snow bank at the end of our driveway. But, tonight I am reading poetry written by twelve and thirteen year-old kids, and they make me smile and laugh. A few of them make me sad. I’m not sure it would feel the same in the spring. Maybe the poems of adolescence are best read in the winter.

Among our lists of things that we have to cover, we are taking the time to just read. Kids bring poems they find, poems they are writing, and I always bring a few to share. Above all, I don’t want poetry to feel “hard.” I want it to be what it is – word play and another form of expression. One of my favorite poets is Naomi Shihab Nye. We’re reading lots of her poems. Today we read one of my favorites, The List.

Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet and novelist who lives in Texas. The daughter of a Palestinian father and an American mother, Nye writes about what we share and about the importance of putting our common humanity ahead of geography and politics.  

The List
By Naomi Shihab Nye

A man told me he had calculated
the exact number of books
he would be able to read before he died
by figuring the average number
of books he read per month
and his probable earth span,
(averaging how long
his dad and grandpa had lived,
adding on a few years since he
exercised more than they did).
Then he made a list of necessary books,
nonfiction mostly, history, philosophy,
fiction, and poetry from different time periods
so there wouldn’t be large gaps in his mind.
He had given up frivolous reading entirely.
There are only so many days.

Oh, I felt sad to hear such an organized plan.
What about the books that aren’t written yet,
the books his friends might recommend
that aren’t on the list,
the yummy magazine that might fall
into his hand at a silly moment after all?
What about the mystery search
through the delectable library shelves?
I felt the heartbeat of forgotten precious books
calling for his hand.

Holiday Giving – Part 2 November 14, 2010

We are beginning a poetry unit with our 4th, 5th and 6th grade students so poetry has been top of mind this weekend.  Children’s poetry is rich with gift ideas. Some of the most beautiful collaborations between writer and artist happen in poetry, and poetry books are a wonderful way to introduce children to the interplay between text and illustration.  I know kids who will tell you they “don’t like” poetry, but when I show them some poetic song lyrics or a cool concrete poem, they usually express a bit more interest.  Poems are about emotions and we all have those. 

Any of these books would be lovely gifts:

Switching on the Moon: A Very First Book of Bedtime Poems collected by Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters and illustrated by G. Brian Karas  (This book won me over with its cover. The blue is beautiful, isn’t it? All of the poems are about end-of-day rituals and would be perfect to read under the covers.)

In the Wild by David Elliott and illustrated by Holly Meade (A book of short poems and amazing woodcuts for the animal lover)

Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer and illustrated by Josee Massee (Here is an excerpt from the School Library Journal review of this incredible book: “This appealing collection based on fairy tales is a marvel to read. It is particularly noteworthy because the poems are read in two ways: up and down. They are reverse images of themselves and work equally well in both directions.  The vibrant artwork is painterly yet unfussy and offers hints to the characters who are narrating the poems. An endnote shows children how to create a “reverse” poem. This is a remarkably clever and versatile book.”  This one is for older kids – you need to be somewhat familiar with fairy tales for the poems to make sense.

The three books listed above are new, but here are some of my all-time favorites:

A World of Wonders: Geographic Travels in Verse and Rhyme by J. Patrick Lewis

A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing and Shout selected by Paul Janeczko and illustrated by Chris Raschka

Poetrees by Douglas Florian

Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors by Joyce Sidman

Bill Martin Jr. Big Book of Poetry by Bill Martin and illustrated by Eric Carle

There are others, but it’s late and I need to “switch on the moon” myself.

A Poke In The I: A Collection of Concrete Poems September 9, 2010

When my son was young, there was one poetry book we read together more often than any other – A Poke In The I. The poems were selected by Paul. B. Janeczko, the well-known poet and educator who has edited many poetry anthologies for children.  A Poke In The I is a collection of concrete poems so they don’t translate too well without Chris Raschka’s energetic and whimsical illustrations, but the one we loved the most is perfect to recite during the U.S. Open:

Tennis Anyone? by Monica Kulling

Tennis                           is a

game I                           could watch

for hours                       but my

neck won’t                    let me

Again, it loses something here, but you read the poem moving your neck back and forth as you would watching a tennis volley. My son thought it was delightful – and so did I.  Now that my son is in high school, I share this playful book with the students at Inly, and it continues to make everyone smile.  Get a copy of the book and check out page 9…very funny!

Paul Janesczko is visiting Inly in the spring, and I can’t wait to introduce him to our students.

Check out Paul’s website: www.paulbjanezko.com for more information on all of his books.

April Showers Bring…Poetry! April 12, 2010

Where’s my head?  I have been cruising along the month of April without writing about National Poetry Month.  I will make every endeavor to catch up – there’s so much to write about.

Here’s a poem from one of my favorite children’s poetry books, Today at the Bluebird Cafe, by Deborah Ruddell:

The Eagle

She rides the sky like she owns the sun,

on a sea of air and light -

surfing, skimming, rising high,

then sweeping low and tight.

She swoops to catch a perfect wave,

her wings held straight and true.

You lift your chin and hold your breath

and wish you could do it too.

Paul Janeczko February 28, 2010

For obvious reasons, our school library has very few duplicate books.  We have two of some books, but that is rare.  Holes comes to mind.  I think we have a hardback and a paperback of that one.  And maybe Frindle.  Anyway, there are two books that don’t have to play that game.  One is D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths.  Kids love it.  Teachers love it.  We have five copies and they stay in circulation.  The other one is Paul Janeczko’s A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms. If I had to list the ten most essential books for a school library,  A Kick in the Head would be one of them.

This is why: if a teacher wants to introduce different forms of poetry, Janecko’s book is the one I hand them.  If a child wants to know what a limerick (or ode or sonnet or Double Dactyl) is, this is the book.  If I need a quick definition of one form of poetry, I take a look at the end of the book where there is an excellent list of poetic forms with short definitions.  This book is essential, and I don’t use the term lightly.  What makes it even better are the very cool illustrations.  Chris Raschka’s brightly colored cut paper and collage illustrations on the bright white background make this guide to poetic forms far more accessible and enjoyable.

A Kick in the Head was the second collaboration between Janeczko and Raschka following another of my favorite poetry books for  children, A Poke in the I.  Here’s the best part - I think Paul Janeczko is visiting our school next spring.  If this works out, it will be far easier to endure another cold winter knowing that our students will have a chance to meet this creative and  generous writer.

All the World February 3, 2010

Six third grade students taught me something today, and they could not have imagined what a special lesson it was for their teacher.

I was talking with them about this year’s Caldecott award winning books: The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney, Red Sings from Treetops by Joyce Sidman and All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon.

After looking at The Lion and the Mouse and talking about the poems in Sidman’s book, I picked up All the World.  I began to explain that Scanlon’s was not a story in the traditional sense, that the book was more like a poem.  As I began to turn the pages, a few of the children began to read the book aloud.  A few pages later, all six voices were reading the words.  I wish I had a tape recorder.  It was absolutely the way this book was meant to be enjoyed.  I had needlessly worried that the story would not “grab” a group of third grade students, but it didn’t matter.  After I turned the final page, we all sat there for a moment.  I only wish Liz Scanlon could have heard her beautiful words recited like a prayer.