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Author: Mary Ann Hoberman (on JOMB)
Illustrator: Laura Huliska-Beith (on JOMB)
Published: 2002 Little, Brown and Co. (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0316363286 Chapters.ca Amazon.com

Twenty-eight pages of mystery, mischief and marvelously meandering rhyme take us on a distraction-packed cat-finding mission that introduces youngsters to the numbers 1 to 28 and — perhaps, more importantly — introduces adults to the delightful art of dawdling.

Just One More Book!! has an interview with children's book author Mary Ann Hoberman and her niece, author and illustrator Deborah Freedman, up for your enjoyment.

Andrea and Mark of Just One More Book!! have also produced this month's Sounds From the Forest, which will have outtakes from the interview. It will be up with The Edge of the Forest this evening.

Sometimes, a passion for children’s books – especially creating them – extends through generations of the same family. Take for example Mary Ann Hoberman, an accomplished author of over forty children’s books and many more poems, and her niece Deborah Freedman, an architect who’s first children’s book, Scribble, was published earlier this year.

On this edition of Just One More Book!, Mark speaks with Mary Ann Hoberman and Deborah Freedman about creativity, memory, children’s books and how these two creative women have influenced each other in their work.

Books mentioned:

• The Snowy Day
• All My Shoes Come in Twos
• How Do I Go?
• Scribble

PEN essay mentioned: Mary Ann Hoberman, “And Yet…”

Participate in the conversation by leaving a comment on this interview, or send an email to [email protected].

Images:

It's poet and author Mary Ann Hoberman’s birthday, so I’d like to post this little bio-tribute to her and her work. For more complete information, please look for Poetry People; A Practical Guide to Children's Poets (Libraries Unlimited, 2007).

Mary Ann Hoberman was born on August 12, 1930, in Stamford, Connecticut. As a teenager, she wrote for her school newspaper and edited her high school yearbook. She received a bachelor’s degree in history from Smith College and earned her master’s degree in English Literature from Yale University thirty-five years later. In the mean time, she married and had four children. She and her husband have lived for over forty years in a house that her husband designed in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Hoberman has taught writing and literature at all levels and co-founded and performed with a children’s theatre group. But when her first book was published in 1957, she turned her attention to writing for children. Her work has received many citations including a National Book Award in 1983 for A House is a House for Me. She received the National Council of Teachers of English Excellence in Poetry for Children Award in 2003 for her entire body of work.

Mary Ann Hoberman’s poetry often targets our youngest audience with rhythm and repetition, usually published in picture book form or as “read aloud” rhyming “stories,” such as in You Read to Me, I'll Read to You: Very Short Fairy Tales to Read Together (Little Brown, 2004). Other inviting collections include The Llama Who Had No Pajama: 100 Favorite Poems (Harcourt, 1998), Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Brothers: A Collection of Family Poems (Little Brown, 2001) and My Song is Beautiful: Poems and Pictures in Many Voices (Little Brown, 1994).

For one outstanding example of Hoberman’s style, look for her poem “Take Sound” which she composed especially for the ceremony at which she was given the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. It also appears in Paul Janeczko’s poetry anthology Seeing the Blue Between (Candlewick, 2002). Hoberman acknowledges that the poem pays homage to the great children's poet David McCord, the first recipient of the award, and in particular to his poem, "Take Sky," by echoing its title and cadence. It focuses on the pleasures of sharing the sounds and words of poetry with children and is a great way to begin a poetry lesson or unit or just to celebrate Hoberman’s gift for poetic expression.

Take Sound
by Mary Ann Hoberman

Each word a poem.
Take sound—

Its mysteries abound:
To hear a sound;
To sound to find;
Or to be sound
In body, mind;
A stretch of water
Wide and clear;
To register
Upon the ear—
Each separate meaning
Hovers, tense
Above the more
Intended sense.
Each part of speech
Another trope,
A turn
In the kaleidoscope.
And in this lovely
Layered thing,
The origins
Of language sing,
Alive, ambiguous, absurd—
In the beginning was the word.

Picture credit: www.nationalbook.org

Author: Mary Ann Hoberman (on JOMB)
Illustrator: Nadine Bernard Westcott
Published: 2000 Little, Brown and Company
ISBN: 0439295165 Chapters.ca Amazon.com

When it comes to generously illustrated sing-along staples, more is more. Boasting eleven extra verses of the classic toddler tune and thirty-two pages of captivating illustrations, this book has always left our girls eager for more.

Other books mentioned:

• Skip to My Lou
• Miss Mary Mack

I had been waiting with excitement for May 23rd to arrive—the date of the spring meeting of the Massachusetts PAS North Shore Council of IRA. I had invited Mary Ann Hoberman to be our guest speaker—and was really looking forward to seeing her again.

Mary Ann Hoberman

Mary Ann shared some poems from her first published book ALL MY SHOES COME IN TWOS, which was illustrated by her husband, and from other books. She spoke about literacy and children learning to read and how she knew from a very early age that she wanted to be a writer. She never thought, however, that she would write books for children. Mary Ann feels English is a wonderful and rich language that can be used in inventive and playful ways by a poet. She told us about a children’s novel that she has written and about how she decided to censor the story herself. (You can learn more about this at the PEN link below.) She also talked about her series of You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You books, which were written for two voices.

This series of books, which were written in verse, are very popular with teachers and parents. In fact, the first book in the series, YOU READ TO ME, I’LL READ TO YOU: VERY SHORT STORIES TO READ TOGETHER, was on the New York Times Best Seller List for fifteen weeks! Mary Ann said she loves the illustrations Michael Emberley did for this series—and explained that the fourth book in the series, YOU READ TO ME, I’LL READ TO YOU: VERY SHORT SCARY TALES TO READ TOGETHER, was Michael’s idea. This book will be released in August. Judging from the “scary tale” she and I read aloud to the audience from her advance copy—the fourth book in the series will be just as outstanding as the first three.

Find Out More about Mary Ann Hoberman and Her Poetry

Mary Ann Hoberman’s Website

A Poem Is a House for Words: NCTE Profiles Mary Ann Hoberman

Insights Beyond the Movie, an Author Program In-depth Interview with Mary Ann Hoberman at TeachingBooks.net.

In Mary Ann Hoberman: And Yet… , Mary Ann tells about a children’s novel she wrote recently, looks back on her childhood, and discusses self-censorship. This article can be found at the PEN American Center.

Sally was my outstanding Library Assistant.

Kathy & Anna Alter

Kathy is one of my oldest friends. She retired from teaching last June.

Mary Newell DePalma and Dr. Margaret (Peg) Voss Howard

Peg is the author of HIDDEN LITERACIES, which was published by Heinemann. Peg and I used to be in a writers group together.

Kate & Virginia

Kate was a student in my children's literature course. Viriginia is a past president of our council.

Carolyn & Kristen

Carolyn is my niece and Kristen is Kathy's daughter.

Any of you who are regular readers of Wild Rose Reader or Blue Rose Girls knows that I have a passion for children’s poetry. I own hundreds of children’s poetry books. I am always looking for out of print books written by children’s poets whose work I admire.

It was indeed a great pleasure for me to meet and get to know Mary Ann Hobeman, one of my favorite children’s poets, two summers ago at a children’s literature conference in Gorham, Maine. After the conference, Mary Ann was kind enough to send me two of her poetry books that have been out of print for quite some time: NUTS TO YOU & NUTS TO ME (published in 1974) and YELLOW BUTTER PURPLE JELLY RED JAM BLACK BREAD (published in 1981).

THE LLAMA WHO HAD NO PAJAMA

Written by Mary Ann Hoberman
Illustrated by Betty Fraser

Browndeer Press/Harcourt Brace (1998)

Here is one of my favorite poems from THE LLAMA WHO HAD NO PAJAMA:

Mayfly
by Mary Ann Hoberman

Think how fast a year flies by
A month flies by
A week flies by
Think how fast a day flies by
A Mayfly’s life lasts but a day
A single day
To live and die
A single day
How fast it goes
The day
The Mayfly
Both of those.
A Mayfly flies a single day
The daylight dies and darkness grows
A single day
How fast it flies
A mayfly’s life
How fast it goes.


Three other poems that are included in THE LLAMA WHO HAD NO PAJAMA—Fish, The Folk Who Live in Backward Town, and Brother—can be found at the website of the Poetry Foundation.


From Fish

Look at them flit
Lickety-split
Wiggling
Swiggling
Swerving
Curving
Hurrying
Scurrying
Chasing
Racing
Whizzing
Whisking
Flying
Frisking
Tearing around
With a leap and a bound…

Read the rest of the poem here.


From The Folk Who Live in Backward Town

The folk who live in Backward Town
Are inside out and upside down.
They wear their hats inside their heads
And go to sleep beneath their beds.

Read the rest of the poem here.


From Brother

I had a little brother
And I brought him to my mother
And I said I want another
Little brother for a change.
But she said don’t be a bother
So I took him to my father
And I said this little bother
Of a brother’s very strange.

Read the rest of the poem here.


THE LLAMA WHO HAD NO PAJAMA is a treasure chest of poems—each of which is a little gem just right for sharing with children...each of which is just right for showing children how much fun language can be.

If you enjoyed reading these poems, you may want to visit the Poems page of Hoberman’s website where you will find several more of her works.

I’ll close my post this Poetry Friday with the ending lines from the last poem in THE LLAMA WHO HAD NO PAJAMA.


From Good Morning When It’s Morning

Good morning to the sunshine
Good evening to the sky
And when it’s time to go away
Good-by
Good-by
Good-by.

Poetry lover Laura Purdie Salas, one of the Wordy Girls and a poet herself, is the winner of a book that will be signed next week by the children’s author who is going to be the featured speaker at the spring meeting of the Massachusetts PAS North Shore Council of IRA. (You can read more about it here.) Laura correctly guessed that our speaker is going to be Mary Ann Hoberman, the award-winning author of more than forty outstanding children’s poetry books and picture books in verse. Mary Ann Hoberman was the 2003 recipient of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. She is also the winner of a National Book Award.

Mary Ann published her first book, ALL MY SHOES COME IN TWOS, fifty years ago.

She is still writing wonderful books for children today. The books in her You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You series, written for two voices, are great fun to read aloud and have become popular with children and adults alike. You can read a review of one of the books in the series, YOU READ TO ME I’LL READ TO YOU: VERY SHORT FAIRY TALES TO READ TOGETHER, in my Poetry Friday: Fairy Tale Poems post at Blue Rose Girls.