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#18 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2010.


 Penny Candy Store in McCloud, CA by mlhradio.

Just for today, let's go to an old fashioned candy store!

What would you like? How about some root beer barrels, salt water taffy, red hots, sour balls, or peppermint sticks? Maybe some licorice, Smarties, gumballs, Gummi Bears or wax lips? Don't forget the Mary Janes, Bit-o-Honey, fireballs, and caramels!


 mosaic by simplyembellish.

Can't decide? Me neither. So many colors, shapes, sizes, and textures -- hard, chewy and crunchy. I just want something to last as long as possible ☺. Good thing Laura Salas has dropped by with a special poem about the quintessential childhood candy, lollipops!

"Yum!" is an unused poem Laura wrote for the collection, Lettuce Introduce You: Poems About Food (Capstone, 2008).

         

I imagine after today, "Yum!" will get lots of licks and love. If we're extra nice, maybe Laura's daughter Maddie will share her lollipop.



YUM!

I'm swallowing lemony yellow.
I'm craving light blueberry blue.
The red's cherry bright,
Lime green is just right,
And orange tastes like summer days do!

This lollipop's big as my lunchbox.
Each color is perfectly swirled.
It's sweet and it's slick,
And with each slurpy lick,
I feel like I'm eating the world!

© 2010 Laura Purdie Salas. All rights reserved.

I love how Laura's captured that "kid in a candy shop" elation. My favorite line is "orange tastes like summer days do." Now, while we're on a sugar high, check out Laura's recipe for Brickle. She admits both she and Maddie are not into cooking, but every year at Christmas they always make some Brickle. A nice family tradition, don't you think? At first glance, you might think one of the ingredients is a little strange. Here's what Laura had to say about the recipe:

I know this recipe sounds weird. If I had read the recipe before tasting it (it was a holiday gift from a neighbor one year), I never would have tried it. So your readers will have to trust my sweet tooth and give it a go. It's better than Skor bars.



LAURA AND MADDIE'S BRICKLE

Ingredients:

40 Saltines
2 sticks butter
1 cup brown sugar
12 oz. chocolate chips
slivered almonds

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Cover cookie sheet with foil and spray with Pam.
3. Spread Saltines in single layer.
4. On stove, melt butter and brown sugar.
5. Bring to full boil and cook 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
6. Remove and pour over crackers.
7. Bake for 5 minutes.

Look out! Take cover! Clear the decks!

A stampede is coming!!

Just two days from now, Monday, April 6th, to be exact, Stampede!: Poems to Celebrate the Wild Side of School, by the amazingly prolific author and poet, Laura Purdie Salas, will be officially released through Clarion Books! WooHoo!!

      
        STAMPEDE!: POEMS TO CELEBRATE THE WILD SIDE OF SCHOOL
         by Laura Purdie Salas, pictures by Steven Salerno,
         (Clarion Books, 2009), Ages 4-8, 32 pp.

That's right. One of Poetry Friday's regular participants, deemed last year an official Poetry Princess, she of the famous 15 Words or Less weekly poetry writing feature, is launching her first trade book collection of poems for kids.

Friends, I gotta tell you, this book is deliciously wild. I received a review copy from the fabulous folks at Clarion, and I've been gleefully eating up all of Laura's poems and Steven Salerno's wacky and imaginative brush, gouache, and digitally enhanced illustrations.


Resident animals enthusiastically welcome Laura's new book.

Laura's theme is exceedingly clever. She says she got the idea from her daughter, Maddie, who had to have two teeth pulled when she was in the third grade. Laura took Maddie out for a milkshake, and Maddie replaced her missing teeth with straws. A walrus! A few months later, Laura visited Maddie's class and they all wrote poems comparing themselves to animals. From then on, a veritable stampede of kids-as-animals poems thundered through Laura's brain, and some of them became this book.

From the opening poem, "Swarm," where kids flood the schoolyard, buzzing and flitter-tumbling, to the jubilant "Stampede" of elephants at day's and book's end, readers (young and old), will be able to identify with the all-too-familiar scenarios.


Winkler ogles "Here Boy," a poem about lunch.

Remember how your stomach growled like a starving bear during class? Or how big and scary a new school felt on the first day, making you feel like a mouse in a maze? Or how you wanted to retract into your turtle shell so the teacher wouldn't call on you? Laura really nails the universal emotions of the school experience in all its joy and angst. Kids (while laughing) will be reassured that they're not the only ones, and adults will be reminded that what we sometimes consider to be minor or trivial things, can be a big deal to a child.

Go on, sample these tasty poems paired with their spreads:

"Ducks in a Row"

Do you all
Understand how we walk while in school?
Children, listen!
Keep quiet's the number one rule.
Leave the lockers alone and
I'm sure you'll do fine.
No poking or
Giggling -- and
Stay in your line!



"Prickly"

When I'm feeling
porcupine-y.
I get nasty,
I get whiny.

Stay away or
I might stick you.
My sharp words are
quills to prick you.



"Stampede"

The last bell rings
We spill outside,
like captives finally freed.

We're thundering, fumbling
elephants --
an after-school stampede.

Now, please join me in my favorite alphabet soup tradition, of celebrating new book releases with a special bowl of soup. Let's all congratulate Laura with a virtual stampede of buzzes, oinks, trumpets, eeks, grunts, growls, quacks, barks, tweets, rumbles and roars. Then, spend the rest of the day looking at your co-workers, family members or even strangers on the street. What kind of animals are they? What about you?


Today's Lunchbox Special: Salas Super Stampede Soup (guaranteed to make you earn better grades in school).

What? You thought I forgot dessert? It's Poetry Month, so you can have your cupcake and eat it too:

Which animal are you? (photo by specialcakes/tracey)

Be sure to join Laura for her online Stampede Launch Party, all day Monday. There'll be videos, readings, poems that didn't make the cut, and much more. (I'm already wearing my elephant ears and nose, and can't wait to party down!)

Click here for the special Stampede! web page. View the book trailer here, and knock yourself out with a fun activity sheet on writing animal poems here.

Visit Laura's official website for information about her other books (she's also published tons of nonfiction titles and 10 poetry collections for the educational market)! It's full of great resources for writers and poets, and details her presentations, school visits, and online classes.

Of course, don't miss her Live Journal blog, Writing the World for Kids, for the latest updates. For those especially interested in book promotion, also check out Bubble Stampede, where Laura co-blogs with Fiona Bayrock every Monday. For the past 9 months or so, these two ladies have been filling us in on all the nuts and bolts of launching and promoting their first children's trade books.

Amy Planchak Graves is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup today. Be sure to check out all the other reviews and poems being served, and have a good weekend!

To see all the Soup of the Day Book Release posts on this blog, click here.

**And don't forget, starting Monday, you can thunder over to your local indie or click through to your fave online bookseller, to capture your copy of Stampede!

*Interior spreads from Stampede! posted by permission of the publisher, text copyright © 2009 Laura Purdie Salas, illustrations copyright © 2009 Steven Salerno; Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
 

Holy Lettuce, Batman!

Laura Purdie Salas ( laurasalas ) has gone and done it again!

Do you remember back in January, when I made some soup celebrating Laura's seven (!) new books? Well, this month, uber-prolific Laura has seven more titles out (as far as I know)!

There are four new titles in the A+ Books Poetry Series published by Capstone Press, and three new titles in the Amazing Science Series published by Picture Window Books. Laura's Amazing Science books, illustrated by Jeff Yesh, are geared for grades 1-4 (24 pp):

From Mealworm to Beetle: Following the Life Cycle
From Seed to Daisy: Following the Life Cycle
From Seed to Maple Tree: Following the Life Cycle.

         

You may remember that the A+ books (PreK-2) contain stunning photographs paired with Laura's expertly crafted poems on various subjects. This new batch includes:

Always Got My Feet: Poems about Transportation
Chatter, Sing, Roar, Buzz: Poems about the Rain Forest
A Fuzzy-Fast Blur: Poems about Pets
Lettuce Introduce You: Poems about Food.

Did somebody say FOOD?



Pre-readers will love hearing these poems read aloud as they pore over the exuberant larger-than-life and life-size photos. Early readers will love sounding out all the delicious and crunchy words as they explore the essence of different foods. Laura serves up a variety of poetic forms, too -- limerick, acrostic, concrete, haiku, and limerick.

It's very hard to resist licking the pages, as there's sushi, spaghetti, buttered corn-on-the-cob, s'mores, a skyscraper sandwich, a waffle, and my favorite, *drum roll, please*, a hearty bowl of alphabet soup! There are glossaries in the back with poetic terms and word definitions, as well as suggestions for further study (book titles and internet links). Highly recommended for home schoolers and school libraries!

Well, folks, today you're allowed seven helpins' of soup to properly congratulate Laura for all these great new titles (I've got my ladle ready for refills). These books are the perfect way to begin a new school year -- so click on through!

 
        Today's Special: Salas Salada (food of choice for souper women)

Check out Laura's website and blog for more about her books and online courses. She's also co-blogging with Fiona Bayrock over at Bubble Stampede. Both ladies have trade books coming out next year and are chronicling their promotional efforts. Laura is very excited because her new book, Stampede: Poems about the Wild Side of School (Clarion, 2009), will be her first trade book, after years of publishing for the educational market.

                       

*Special thanks to Mary Hershey ( maryhershey ) for use of the photo!

Is that not the prettiest site or what? That's the first of 25 boxes of Book of Nonsense ARCs. And the books look lovely. I'm so happy I could cry tears of joy. I'm sending the author and his agent copies on Monday. I hope they're as excited as me.

Do you want a copy? If you'd like to sign-up to potentially review CBAY books, use the form on the Sneaky Peeks page. I know that it addresses kids and teens, but I'm happy to let adults review too. Otherwise, I'll have some contests starting soon, with copies up for grab then.

Now, I have to spend some quality time with my ARCs. I was thinking of taking them to the movies, and then reading them a story before bed. Maybe Little Bunny Kung Fu or There's a Yak in My Bed . . .