The Best Worst Poet Ever

The Best Worst Poet Ever by Lauren Stohler. Grades 2-5. Atheneum, 2020. 48 pages. Review copy provided by my local library. 

Cat and Pug are both determined to become the best poet ever, but they each have very different approaches to their goals. These two artists who share a work space don't get along at first - Cat needs order and quiet; Pug needs snacks and the freedom to use his own process. But as these competing poets duel with words, they realize that their feud is sparking some great work. Imagine what a great poem they could write if they teamed up and worked together?! 

Brimming with humor, in both the poems and the illustrations, this is a really fun introduction to poetry and the creative process. Read this with any class who has reservations about your poetry unit being boring. Pug types a poem with his butt! And the text includes many different types of poems - haiku and a dual voice poem, making it a tool for introducing different styles of poems. Hand this to fans of funny verse like Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, or Alan Katz. 

Poetry Egg Hunt

April is National Poetry Month and we celebrated that with our homeschoolers this month at Fantastic Friday! I've been trying to come up with fun activities to add to our program, and - I'm not kidding - I literally dreamed this activity while I was on vacation.

We did a Poetry Egg Hunt!

I printed out the words to two nursery rhymes ("Humpty Dumpty" and "Sing a Song of Sixpence"), each on a different color paper. I cut out all the words and stuffed them into colorful plastic eggs. When the families arrived, I entertained them in our program room for about 10 minutes (announcements about upcoming programs, booktalking and sharing some poetry with them) while my colleagues hid the eggs throughout our department.

Once the eggs were hidden, I released the kids to find all the eggs and put them in a large communal basket. Once we had all the eggs*, we brought them back into our program room, cracked them open, sorted out the blue words and the yellow words, and I challenged the kids to unscramble the words to make up their nursery rhymes. I provided construction paper and glue for them to glue the words down as they unscrambled them.

The kids had a BLAST searching for the eggs and some of them really got into sorting out the rhymes. It was an easy and fun activity to kick off our poetry program.

I chose nursery rhymes because I was relatively certain that all or most of the kids would be familiar with them, but this would certainly work with any poems.

Some tips from our experience:

• Create a backup set of words in case some get lost or any eggs remain unfound. That way your kids can still unscramble the entire rhyme (can they tell you which words are missing?).  
• Have a printout of the rhymes you're using just IN CASE your kids don't happen to know the nursery rhymes you picked. I had a couple that didn't know "Sing a Song of Sixpence", but one of the moms helped out. 
• I put the words to "Humpty Dumpty" on yellow paper and hid those words in the warm-color eggs (pinks, reds, oranges, yellows) and the words to "Sing a Song of Sixpence" on blue paper and hid those words in the cool-color eggs (blues, greens, purples). I had a moment where I thought only 3 kids had shown up, so I was prepared to only hide half the eggs.
• Count the eggs so you know when the kids have found them all!
• We didn't, but you may want to create a map of where the eggs are hidden so you can make sure you get them all. Or this might be more work than it's worth. 
• You may want to hide the eggs in advance, but it worked for us to do them after our families had arrived and were in the meeting room. That way we didn't have to worry about other children walking off with them or about keeping the kids from starting early when they arrived to play before the program.

We did this program with our homeschoolers as part of our monthly homeschool program, but I think this activity would work well with a variety of groups. It's conducive to a wide range of ages - we had a span of ages 4-16 at this particular program. To do it like we did it, at least some of the kids need to be reading to unscramble the poems, but if you wanted to try something like this with pre-readers, consider: 

• Unscrambling the rhyme as a group with the librarian reading the words and the kids helping recite the rhyme.
• Having a pre-written poem on large paper or your dry-erase board and the kids searching for rhyming words to fill in the gaps. 
• Hiding rhyming words and asking kids to help you match them up when the group gets back together. 

And this doesn't necessarily have to be a poem activity! For a group tour, you could hide the titles of books or subjects and ask the kids to use your catalog to find the call numbers. You could hide letters and ask the kids to put them in alphabetical order. The possibilities are numerous. 

Are you doing any programs or lessons for National Poetry Month? I'd love to hear about what you're doing! 

* Okay, all but one. There is still one egg floating around somewhere in our department. We'll probably find it in June.

Seeds, Bees, Butterflies, and More!

Seeds, Bees, Butterflies, and More!: Poems for Two Voices by Carole Gerber, illustrated by Eugene Yelchin. Grades 1-5. Henry Holt & Co, February 2013. Review copy provided by my local library.

As the days get longer, thoughts may turn to spring, making Seeds, Bees, Butterflies, and More! the perfect book to display on library shelves or use in classrooms. Poems in this book feature seeds of all kinds, the plant growing process, and various plants and insects, giving a wide range of spring-related content. The poems are written for two voices, clearly demarcated with indentation and font colors. What fun to have students read these poems together and then ask them to compose their own poems for two voices!

Each poem is paired with exuberant artwork by Eugene Yelchin (maybe you know him as the author of the 2012 Newbery Honor book Breaking Stalin's Nose?). The colors leap off the page -  bright pinks, yellows, and blues - and evoke spring with every brushstroke. They pair with the poems nicely to create an upbeat tone throughout the book.

Carole Gerber includes an author's note giving a little more information about seeds, plant parts, and pollination, but this is most definitely a poetry book. It will add much to science units, bridging the gap between science and language arts, but if you're looking for information you'll need to pair this fun poetry book with another text.

Consider pairing this one with Douglas Florian's UnBEElievables: Honeybee Poems and Paintings or Yucky Worms by Vivian French for more on the insects that help our gardens grow.

Seeds, Bees, Butterflies, and More! is on shelves now.

A Strange Place to Call Home

A Strange Place to Call Home: The World's Most Dangerous Habitats and the Animals That Call Them Home by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Ed Young. Grades 4-6. Chronicle Books, 2012. 44 pages. Review copy provided by my local library. 

The inner sanctum of a cave, too dark for eyes to be useful. Deep inside a glacier, surrounded by ice. High on the mountains with little shelter from weather and wind. In the middle of a desert, buffeted by sandstorms. 

These are some of the dangerous places in which animals have adapted to live, and which are featured in Marilyn Singer's poems. 

Here's where I give you a caveat. I'm approaching this review from a nonfiction standpoint. WorldCat gives this book the subject heading of Animals -- Habitations -- Juvenile literature. The book's subtitle leads me to believe it's meant as an informational book. This review might be very different if I approached it as a poetry book. 

And this book was a definite miss for me. It's much better suited to be marketed as a poetry book, not an informational text, down to the fact that the only resource for further research is a link to a website on poetry forms. 

Spreads feature a poem about an animal living in a dangerous environment and an illustration by Caldecott-winning-illustrator Ed Young. Some poems have more information than others. They're done in a variety of formats and it's certainly intriguing to link an informational book with various forms of poetry. This book should be Common Core gold, but I found the informative aspect of the book to be weak. 

This book could work much better as a nonfiction text if facts (even brief facts) had accompanied each spread, not been grouped together at the end notes, particularly for the briefer poems. The illustrations, too, varied widely in their quality (a particular least favorite was the insane-looking mountain goat) and for the most part served this informational text poorly. For some animals, like the spadefoot toads seen from above, it's impossible to discern their actual shape from these illustrations. With many of these creatures so rarely seen and animals many kids may not be familiar with, photos included with the end notes would have gone a long way. 

Although facts are presented in the end notes (including the Latin names of the animals and the geographic area in which they live), no sources are cited and no author's or illustrator's note is included. A page with information about poetry forms, including listing the poetry forms used for some of the poems in the book, is included in the back matter.

Pick up this book if you're looking for a poetry book featuring different poetry forms. It could also be supplemental material to a unit on animal habitats and it may inspire students to do further research on the unusual animals discussed. But make sure you have other resources available for students, since this book provides no guidance on where to look for information. 

And hey, it's Nonfiction Monday, and Travis (one of our favorite guybrarians) is hosting over at 100 Scope Notes. Do go check it out! 

Poetry Friday: Ocean Soup

Ocean Soup: Tide-Pool Poems by Stephen R. Swinburne, illustrated by Mary Peterson. (Grades 2-5.) Charlesbridge, February 2010. Review copy provided by publisher.

If a starfish interviewed an octopus, what questions would it ask? Do mussels ever get sick of living so close together? And what the heck is a "gastropod", anyway? In Ocean Soup: Tide-Pool Poems we'll hear from all these creatures and many more. Bright illustrations of tide-pool creatures, complete with anthropomorphic expressions, accompany the lively poems in this seaside collection.

Some of the poems worked better than others for me, but overall this is a good collection. And it fits in perfectly with this summer's collaborative Summer Reading theme.

My favorite of the poems is probably Hairy Doris. Here's a snippet:

Hello, my name is Doris.
I'm a shell-less gastropod, 
but you can call me "sea slug,"
if gastropod sounds odd. 


Don't you think I'm gorgeous? 
With my raspy tongue I scrape
for bits of healthy food to eat. 
A slug must watch her shape.

This is an example, too, of how Steve Swinburne incorporates facts into each poem. Also, a short blurb accompanies each poem giving a few more facts about the animal in question.

Steve talks about the inspiration behind Ocean Soup over at Unabridged, the Charlesbridge blog.

And it's Poetry Friday. Head on over to The Drift Record for the roundup.

Book Review: I and I: Bob Marley

I and I: Bob Marley by Tony Medina, illustrated by Jesse Joshua Watson. Grades 4-8. Lee & Low Books, April 2009. Copy provided by my local library.

When I stare
Into that dark
Expanse beyond
The stars
I see Africa
With her back
Full of scars
...
I come from all
Of this
And there's much
More I need
To know

I want to make songs
As pure and clear
As water
To help my people
Grow

(from Pitch-Black Sky)

Okay, I have to tell you that I didn't know one single thing about Bob Marley before picking up this book. Other than random songs heard occasionally in various places, I haven't even listened to his music (though you can be sure I'm going to now...)

In striking verses and vibrant paintings, Tony Medina and Jesse Joshua Watson have brought the man to life for a new generation.

Bob Marley was born in Jamaica in 1945, son of an African Jamaican mother and a white European father. From the time he was a little boy, people knew Bob was special and they even though he might have prophetic powers. Truly, Bob was a kid who grew to be a teen who loved music and who saw wrongness in the world that he wanted to put right. He wanted to empower people to use peace and love to fix the ills of the world.

This is an extraordinary book - beautiful in many different ways. Medina's poetry sounds like song itself. In the back of the book there is an explanation for each poem, giving some more information about Bob Marley or what was going on in the world at that point in time. Each poem is accompanied by Watson's gorgeous artwork. The paintings and the poems really work together to evoke emotions in the reader.

I and I: Bob Marley is creative nonfiction at its best. I hope to see this one sprinkled liberally with awards, come January.

Check out the book trailer:




Read more reviews at A Fuse #8 Production (Betsy points out that the book includes mentions of the less-kid-friendly aspects of Marley's life [i.e. drug use and his many illegitimate children] in the notes), Biblio File, A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy, and The Happy Nappy Bookseller.

Happy Nonfiction Monday! Check out the round-up over at In Need of Chocolate.

Poetry was Definitely Aloud

Our library, like many others, is Being Creative this summer. We've had programs on painting, woodworking, sewing, knitting... and now poetry! Starting a new job in the middle of May means that I adopted a poetry workshop in July. I'm glad it worked out this way because it's a program that I probably wouldn't have planned on my own, but it ended up being quite fun! I think I'm even going to incorporate some of the ideas into our after school programming in the fall.

I got many ideas from the wonderful book Poetry Aloud Here!: Sharing Poetry with Children in the Library by Sylvia M. Vardell. Although it speaks more to school media folk than public librarians doing a one-time program, the book has a lot of great lists of poems and poetry volumes to share with kids. I also pulled ideas from the National Endowment for the Humanities's EDSITEment website All Together Now: Collaborations in Poetry Writing.

This program was for ages 6-12, which is a wide variety. I needed activities that wouldn't necessarily require reading and writing (for the youngest), but would still hold the attention of the tweens. I decided that the program would last between 45 minutes and an hour and I divided it into three parts. I started off by sitting them down and sharing some poetry with them. Funny poems were the biggest hit and really helped to warm up the crowd. I shared:

"I Love Love Love My Brand-New Baby Sister" by Judith Viorst (from the book Sad Underwear and Other Complications)

"The Clocktopus" and "The Tearful Zipperpotamuses" by Jack Prelutsky (both from Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant)

"Winter Eyes" by Douglas Florian (from the book Winter Eyes), which I compared to

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost (from the book Poetry Speaks to Children) - I asked the kids to close their eyes and try to "see" the wintry images in the poems.

And I ended with a few Shel Silverstein poems. Pick out your favorites (there are many to choose from). I read "Sick", "Recipe for a Hippopotamus Sandwich", "Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out", and "I Must Remember" from Where the Sidewalk Ends.

I did two sessions of this program and I didn't read all of these in both sessions. I shared poems for about 15 minutes.

For the next 15 minutes or so, we wrote a poem as a group. I read Shel Silverstein's poem "Whatif" from A Light in the Attic and invited the kids to come up with lines for our own Whatif poem. I copied down the first few and last two lines of the original poem on our whiteboard and had the kids come up with the rhyming couplets to complete the middle. This was super fun and the kids came up with really creative lines. When we had finished our poem, I asked for a volunteer to read it out loud. Here's the poem from my first session:

Whatif the trees don't grow?
Whatif there's no baseball to throw?
Whatif there's no row of chairs?
Whatif there are lice on our hairs?
Whatif there's no peanut butter?
Whatif there was no gutter?
Whatif I don't have a pair of shoes?
Whatif my best friend moves?
Whatif there is no ooze?
Whatif children boos?

We could have gone on all day coming up with more lines and if you have easy access to a copier, you could copy the poem down and give a copy to the kids. Have them illustrate it or simply have them take it home and call it a day.

I had one more activity planned. I cut out (well, to be honest my colleague T cut out) hundreds of typed words and had the kids glue them on blank paper as a kind of "magnetic poetry" craft. The kids who were able to read picked out specific words for their poems. The kids who couldn't read either drew pictures or just picked out random words (those were some of the best - very silly!). It was fairly labor-intensive to cut out all those words and as any "magnetic poet" can tell you, it's sometimes frustrating to sift through all the words looking for the word you want.

If I did the magnetic poetry craft again, I'd make the words a larger size. Truthfully, I think the program didn't really need that last craft and just the activity of creating poems together would have been fun for the kids, especially if they could take a copy of the poems home with them.

Both sessions went well and I think it was a fun introductory poetry program. I think the kids were relieved that there was no pressure to write and/or share a poem (although, of course, if kids wanted to share their poems they were welcome to!). In the first session several of them asked if they could read one of Silverstein's poems out loud to the group and while everyone was working on their craft, they passed the book around and around, reading poems. What a wonderful way to spend an afternoon!

It's Poetry Friday and Mary Lee has the round up over at A Year of Reading.

Book Review: Dinothesaurus

Dinothesaurus: Prehistoric Poems and Paintings by Douglas Florian.

Y'all already know that I'm a huge fan of Mr. Douglas Florian. Well, his latest book does not disappoint.

Dinothesaurus is a collection of poems about (what else?) dinosaurs. With his signature word play and detailed paintings, this collection is sure to please young dino-fanatics.

Each spread contains a painting of an poem about a different dinosaur from the ferocious T-Rex to the gigantic seismosaurus to the tiny micropachycephalosaurus. The paintings have lots of funny little details that make them so much fun to look at closely and each painting is different from all the rest.

Um, I tried and tried to pick a very favorite, but I couldn't because I love so many of them.

Here's a little bit of Pterosaurs:

The pterrifying pterosaurs
Flew ptours the ptime of dinosaurs.
With widespread wings and pteeth pto ptear,
They pterrorized the pteeming air.

And one thing that librarians (and anyone who read aloud) will be happy to find is a pronunciation guide that accompanies each dino poem. Thanks, Douglasaurus! Head over to his blog to see more excerpts and spreads from the book. And then go pick this up for your favorite dino-fan.

Book Review: Hate That Cat

Hate That Cat by Sharon Creech. (Grades 4-7.)

Y'all remember Jack from Love That Dog, right? Remember how he thought he hated poetry until he started writing some himself?

Well, he's back. A whole new school year, a new writing notebook, a furry nemesis, and the same teacher who followed his class up a grade.

In Hate That Cat, Jack's class is studying different poems. At first some of them don't seem to make much sense. (What is up with the red wheelbarrow, anyway??) But the more he reads them, the more they grow on him. And the more poems he writes, the more he figures out about himself and his family and his place in the world.

Jack's also pondering some interesting questions:

Something I am wondering:
if you cannot hear
what happens when you read
purr purr purr
or gurgle
or chocolate chalk?

Can you somehow
feel
the purr purr purr
the gurgle
the chocolate chalk?

Do you feel the sounds
instead of
hear them? (pg 23)

This would be a great book to include in poetry units. In the back of the book Creech includes the poems that Jack talks about and imitates. I'd hand this to fans of Love That Dog, poetry buffs, and young writers.

Also reviewed at Kidsread.com, Fuse #8, and Sarah Miller.

How are you celebrating National Poetry Month??

April is National Poetry Month, so today in After School Adventures, we celebrated poetry. We always pull books for the kids to browse while they wait for the program to start, so I pulled a bunch of poetry books. Two popular ones I noticed the kids poring over were Blackbeard the Pirate and Animal Snackers.

We started by reading the picture book I Know Two Who Said Moo by Judi Barrett. This is a nonsensical rhyming book that rhymes each number with a ridiculous number of words. Crazy pictures accompany and the kids loved picking out the details in the pictures. You can also challenge the kids to see how many words they can think of that rhyme with "two" or "seven".

We also shared some of our favorite poems. I read a few from the book Who Swallowed Harold by Susan Pearson. My favorite one is called "Do Goldfish Pee?" and I challenged them not to laugh (they couldn't do it). All the poems in this collection are about pets and although they asked for funny ones, I think they liked the not-funny ones, too. I also shared some poems from Douglas Florian's Mammalabilia because I love Douglas Florian.

B broke out the uke and we sang "Miss Mary Mack" with the kids joining in on the repeated parts. They like to be silly about it and I think they got really into it. We sang it normally twice and then we sang it superfast.

Then it was time for our craft. We have wonderful volunteers who cut out hundreds of typed words and we made a kind of "magnetic" poetry activity. Each kid had a piece of construction paper and could choose words to glue to their paper to make a nonsensical poem. We stressed that it didn't have to rhyme and it didn't have to make sense... in fact, the sillier the better! We realized that we didn't know if all the kids could read yet, so we also cut out pictures from discarded magazines so the kids could collage and decorate their poems.

The kids came up with great poems, very funny and silly, and they looked great all decorated with the magazine pictures. The kids at our program were grades K-2nd, but I think this craft would be great for older kids, too. Last year we hung a magnetic board in our Teen Zone and provided magnetic poetry for the middle schoolers to play with, which was also a big hit. We certainly had fun celebrating National Poetry Month and I hope you do, too!