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This week we passed the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 and my thoughts turned back to that infamous day. I’m sure you remember how racial tensions mounted during the weeks that followed. Those tensions inspired me to write a children’s story. It has been sitting in a drawer for just under eleven years and I thought this might be a good time to share it.
The Rope of Friendship
There once was a village, nestled beside a towering granite mountain. The mountain was so tall and smooth that no one from the valley had ever climbed it.
A mosque, a synagogue and a chapel stood apart in the village. Cottages surrounded each meetinghouse and the three congregations never mingled . . . well, almost never.
When the sun dipped behind the mountain, people drifted like shadows though the valley. That’s when Rashad left his home by the mosque and crept through a field of grain to Jacob’s home by the synagogue.
He climbed an oak tree. With legs wrapped around a heavy limb, he inched down until the branch dipped and scraped Jacob’s window. SCRIIITCH.
Jacob peered through the glass then snapped the curtains closed.
“What’s that noise?” his mother asked. “I hope the cat isn’t in our storehouse.”
“I’d better go look,” Jacob answered, and hurried out the door.
“Rashad!” Jacob scolded in a loud whisper. “Mama could have seen you.”
“She’d never think I came to find you.” Rashad laughed. “She knows our people don’t mix.”
The boys crept along a dry creek-bed to the chapel. They gathered a few pebbles before dashing to Peter’s house.
A light shone from the window. “He’s in his room,” Rashad whispered, then tossed a pebble at the glass.
A moment later Peter grinned out at them, then climbed down the rose-covered trellis. “Ouch!” he cried when a thorn pricked his hand.
“Shhh,” the boys hissed.
Peter missed the last trellis rail and tumbled to the ground. The boys covered their mouths to hide their laughter as they ran.
They followed the creek-bed to a huge tree, deep within the woods.
“No one’s touched it,” Peter said, pulling a fallen limb from beside the tree.
They tossed aside brush and uncovered the end of a thick braided rope they had woven from vines many months before. Up they climbed, until they reached a platform hidden in the branches above. It was their fort, where, week after week they played together in secrecy.
But this evening was different. CRACK! BOOM! CRASH! Thunderous sounds shattered the stillness.
WOOOOSH! A blast of dusty air nearly tore them from the tree. “Ahhhhhhh!” they screamed as they clung to the lurching branches.
A dust-cloud rolled over them, covering the mountain, covering the moon that had brightened their path.
The boys scrambled down the tree, coughing. “What’s happening?” Joshua sputtered.
“We’d better get home!” Peter said. The boys pulled their shirts over their noses and sheltered their eyes as they struggled toward home through the dust.
When they came to the village they found people huddled in the streets, coughing and staring in shock. An enormous slab of granite had split from the mountainside. Gigantic boulders had crashed down, destroying crops and livestock. Thick gray dust was settling into their wells, turning water to sludge.
“Go to your homes!” the Rabbi called.
“Shut out the dust!” the Priest and Imam advised their followers.
Early the next morning the villagers gathered around their leaders at the foot of the mountain. Each group stood separate from the others.
“We have no food or water,” people complained.
They looked up the mountain. A high plateau, that had been hidden behind the granite peak, now shown in the sunlight. “Look at that grain,” a villager called, pointing to heavy stalks nodding over the edge.
“There are wild berries,” called another.
As they gazed, an old man looked down from the edge of the plateau. He saw the destruction and then looked back at the wild, rich land behind him. If only the villagers could climb the mountain they would have plenty to eat.
The old man tied three long cords around a stout tree and threw them down to the people. One to the north, one to the south and one right down the middle.
The crowds applauded. The Imam, Rabbi and Priest each grabbed a cord and chose a follower to go up the mountainside.
Three villagers pulled themselves up. Hand over hand they climbed until –SNAP – the cords broke and they tumbled down.
The old man dropped three more cords — one to the north, one to the south, and one right down the middle.
More climbers were chosen. Again the cords snapped and people tumbled down.
Rashad, Jacob, and Peter stared at each other across the space that separated their groups. Then they nodded, one to another, and snaked their way through the crowds.
When they reached their leaders, they each asked to try the climb.
The Imam scowled, the others growled and shook their heads. Then, looking down at the boys they realized their small size might help. The leaders shrugged and held out a cord.
Each boy grabbed one and ran to meet at the foot of the mountain. The people gasped.
“Get back!” shouted the villagers. “We don’t mingle — what are they doing?” The boys ignored the shouts and worked together, weaving their cords into a long braided rope, just like the rope they’d woven for climbing into their secret fort.
One after another the boys climbed — up to where the first men had fallen and still the rope held — on to where the next climbers had dropped but the rope did not break. Farther and farther they climbed until, finally, they reached the top.
At first, all was quiet on the mountaintop, but soon a murmur crept up from the valley below. It buzzed and grew, rising to a cheer that echoed through the valley and up the mountainside.
Then the villagers helped one another climb the rope, until all were settled above.
Working together, they soon built a new Mosque, Synagogue, and Chapel, side by side, on the wide plateau.
Ever after, this day has been remembered. The villagers hold a yearly Rope Festival. They play music and eat baked apples, baklava, and challah. Throughout the day, people drop by the weaving post where long strands of cord hang from a pole. They dance the weaving dance Rashad, Jacob and Peter taught them. By the end of each festival, a thick braided rope stretches down from the pole.
Many strands of cord make the rope strong — just as many strands of friendship make a village strong.
On Thursday of this week, I had a hard time wresting a book from one of my seven-year-old students. She really, really wanted to take it home to show her big sister. I almost gave in, but since the book belongs to our city library, I thought I’d better wait and look into getting her a copy of her own. The book that captured her attention was, Chloe and the Lion by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Adam Rex.
Chloe is supposedly the main character in this book, but Mac and Adam take over the story. It begins on the title page where Mac is pictured saying, “This is me, Mac. I’m the author of this book.” On the next page, he introduces Adam, the illustrator. When Chloe appears, Adam is shown putting the final touches on her blue-haired, wide-eyed, bespectacled illustration. She’s charming. Chloe’s story begins when she searches for loose change to pay for a ride on the merry-go-round. And that leads to a walk through a dark forest filled with noises.
“And just as Chloe realized she’d been walking in circles, a huge lion leapt out from behind an oak tree.”
Only a lion doesn’t leap out in the illustration, a dragon does, because Adam thought a dragon would be cooler. My students jumped into the conversation at that point and said, “Yeah, way cooler.” The tension builds between the author and illustrator with some hilarious outcomes. Eventually, Chloe steps in (like any good main character) and saves the day.
This book fits in nicely with one of our Language Arts Standards. First graders in California are expected to recognize the title and author of a story. Our teachers have added to that standard and ask the children to identify the illustrator too. I imagine Adam would appreciate the idea. It only seems fair. By the end of the book, my students could easily identify the author and the illustrator and they had hopes of becoming one or the other themselves. Marie decided she wants to be an author; Justin wants to be an illustrator; and Dylan wants to be the main character. We can work with that. They have some adventurous ideas for a story with three main characters. You can probably guess their names. There won’t be any lions in this story, but the students are planning on lots and lots of dragons!
“Mole had everything –
one small home, one bed, one pillow,
one shelf for books and one cup for tea.”
What more could a mole want? He soon found out when his friend Emerson came for a visit. “Two friends and one teacup did not work.” After Emerson took Mole for a visit to his own home, where he had just about everything, it dawned on Mole that maybe he didn’t have much after-all.
And so Mole set out on a journey in search of “everything.” He tunneled and scraped for miles, popping up into swamps, caves, junkyards and shops collecting odds and ends like a rocket, an old piano, a cactus and just about anything else you could think of, until he had “everything.” Then he tunneled and trudged home, tugging his new possessions along behind him. He crammed it all down his tunnel and you can imagine what it looked like. A two-page spread with an upward foldout displayed the chaotic collection. Mole now had everything but time for the simple pleasures he used to enjoy, like spooking birds or running though fields. With his newly cluttered home he was always “moving this, dusting that, winding, fixing and arranging.”
I won’t spoil Jamison Odone’s story by telling you how it ends - you’ll have to read it yourself and I’m certain you’ll be glad you did. My students enjoyed this book and it promoted a lively discussion. They loved the illustrations and were thrilled about the idea of having so much “junk” (as they appropriately labeled the new possessions). Of course, that was not the point of the story but it opened opportunities to introduce new vocabulary as they selected items they wished they could take home (like the old skull, crashed plane, and a diver’s helmet). By the end of the story, they were beginning to understand the point. Most agreed they’d rather live like Mole had at the beginning of the book, in his snug little home, without the clutter and work it entailed.
Before our session ended, the children began telling about their own collections, like old Halloween buckets, a box of broken seashells and a closet full of outgrown shoes. One child added, “I have a chicken with an egg and I walk him in a cage.” It may not be a collection yet, (until the hen lays a few more eggs), but you’ll have to agree, it was interesting.
My students looked at the teacup sitting on my desk and decided I should follow Mole’s example and collect just a few more things - four to be precise. They thought I needed four more teacups, not for tea, but for steaming cups of hot chocolate with a few mini-marshmallows to throw on top. It sounded tempting.
The students are back and I made it to school each day this week without wearing my slippers, so I’m off to a good start.
My speech groups haven’t begun yet, but I had a chance to read a story to some kindergarteners. It was fun meeting new students and introducing them to Happy School Year!, by Susan Milord, illustrated by Mary Newell DePalma.
This book describes children from all over town, getting ready for their first day of school. Some “yawn and stretch and squint through half-opened eyes” and one “burrows under the covers, hiding until the last possible minute.” Some are nervous, holding back tears, others rush to join friends, and one child thinks about running away. I know our students can relate; I saw a few children clinging to parents and shedding tears before the first bell rang.
The kids were captivated by the bright illustrations in this book and wanted to hop off their carpet squares to touch the pictures. Five-year-olds can be squirmy when they are new to the school environment but they grew attentive when I came to the line, “Today is the first day of school.” Their fidgeting stopped and they leaned in, wanting to catch every word. And the words were ones they could understand, like when the principal in the story spoke,
“A new school year is a great adventure,” she says, “and like all great adventures, it can sometimes be a little scary.”
Then she lit a candle on a cupcake and had the kids make a wish for the year. It was a lovely celebration and sounded like a terrific idea, so we had our own mini celebration. Our cake wasn’t as tasty as the one in the story but the wishes were delicious. One child wished to learn to read, another to learn his numbers, and one child wished to become a mermaid! Each child placed his or her “wishing sticker” on our cake. Take a look:
I have one last quote from the story that is too good to leave out (and it reflects my own sentiments),
“May this be the best ever,
Happy school year for us!”
Last Saturday one kind reader wished me luck with my first day back to work and I replied, “I’m ready!” And I thought I was. I even laid out my clothes on Sunday evening so my brain wouldn’t have to work too hard when the alarm went off for the first time in eight weeks. Things went well Monday morning and I got out the door early enough to make it to my first workshop, but not early enough time to turn around and go back home when I realized I was still wearing my slippers. I wore them all day. I even received compliments on my comfortable looking shoes. (I work with nice people.) Actually it wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds because my slippers do look a lot like shoes and they have thick, cushy soles so I made it through the day without too much embarrassment. And I was able to focus on the first presentation, which was all about the Common Core Standards.
By now, most educators, kid-lit writers, publishers and bloggers are familiar with one of the shifts in the standards, that being a 50-50 balance between fiction and nonfiction in the classroom. I even heard our superintendent comment that our school librarians will need to start ordering more nonfiction books. Fortunately there are many good ones to choose from, like “Toco Toucans: Bright Enough to Disappear” by Anastasia Suen.
This picture book is full of beautiful photos and captivating information. Did you know toco toucans’, over-sized, over-bright beaks and their coloring actually help them hide from predators? They match the color scheme of their tropical rain forest home so their coloring is their greatest defense. This book is a wonderful introduction to camouflage. Young scientists will have fun searching through the pages for animals hidden in their natural environment. The glossary is illustrated so not only can they read or listen to the definitions of words such as “nestling,” they will see the words defined. My students are going to love this one, right from the first page,
“In the lush tropical rain forest, brightly colored fruit can be seen growing in trees. Look closely, however. One of the pieces of fruit isn’t really fruit. It’s bird called a toco toucan!”
My first week is over and I made it through without too many issues. There was another morning slip-up. My brain is still getting used to the early wake-up time. Yesterday, I hopped in the shower and grabbed my body wash, the one that promises “deep moisturizing” with its “rich body butter to soften the skin”. It does that when used on the skin. But moisturized, buttery hair is not so nice and that is where I applied the body wash, lavishly. I shampooed and rinsed three times to get it out but I wasn’t entirely successful. My hair had a greasy unwashed look all day and it’s still stringy. But the look isn’t entirely out of style in some circles. And it will wash out eventually. I hope.
Kids will be pouring onto our campus early on Monday. I look forward to seeing the returning students and meeting new ones. I’ve got more books to share, new activities planned and fresh decorations on my wall. I’m ready! At least until the alarm rings on Monday morning.
Last spring I was walking a group of kindergarten students to the speech room when one of them, Andrea, said, “I know a knock, knock joke.”
“I’d love to hear it,” I answered.
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody who?”
“No!” Andrea said. “You can’t ask ‘who’, because nobody’s there.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.” I searched her face, looking for clues. Maybe this was the part of the joke where I was supposed to laugh. I was a little out of practice with knock, knock jokes but she helped me out by repeating, “Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Nobody.”
This time I knew better than to ask. Andrea smiled, delighted I was finally catching on. She knocked again. I asked the question again. She giggled and said, “You got it. There was nobody there.”
Another student, Michael said, “My turn. Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
His mouth tightened into a thin slit and his eyes widened, glistening with a mischievous joy. He couldn’t hold that expression long before he broke into laughter. “Did you get it? Nobody was there!”
Pretty clever for a couple five-year olds.
I suppose these knock, knock jokes came to mind because nobody has been knocking at my speech room door for the last eight weeks. But that is about to change. I return to work on Monday and the kids start school the following week.
Over the summer, I’ve been on the lookout for a few good books to introduce to my students. I found the perfect one to start the school year: “A Dress for Me!” by Sue Fleiss, illustrated by Mike Laughead. My students loved the adorable young hippo from her earlier book, “Shoes for Me!” Now the hippo is back and as charming as ever. The book begins,
School is starting.
I’ve grown tall.
Time to buy new
clothes for fall!
“Should we shop now?”
I say, “Yes!”
Mom says I can
choose a dress!
With the wide variety of dresses to select from, it’s not surprising this young hippo has a hard time finding the perfect one. She sees clothes with stripes, spots, plaids, ruffles, polka-dots, pointy collars, shiny sequins, and even a dress that looks like her grandma’s rug. Adjectives bounce across the pages and illustrations provide even more opportunities for kids to use describing words. It will be easy to start the year off with a nod to a couple of the “Common Core Standards” like one for teaching adjectives (L.K.5 if you’re interested), or teaching rhyming words (RF.K.2. if you want to know.)
This book will open a flood of stories from my younger students. They always love to tell of their preparations for the school year. I know they won’t all be able to shop for “new” clothes, but that doesn’t lessen their excitement over their trips to second-hand stores or their cousin’s closet, full of beautiful, outgrown garments.
In nine days I’ll be meeting a new crop of kindergarten students and the “older” kids will soon be knocking at my door with new clothes and fresh school supplies. As in years past, I’m sure they will be brimming full of summer stories and new jokes like this one:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Well, I don’t know yet, but I’ll keep you posted.
Last spring at a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference, I attended the workshop, “What is Voice? Definitions and Tools to Understand and Craft Voice in Your Writing.” The presenter, Brett Duquette, did an excellent job of defining “voice” and detailing ways to develop it in writing. He also gave a list of “required reading” for voice and one of the books I especially loved was, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. The main character, Arnold Spirit Jr. is a fourteen-year-old Indian living on a reservation, who was born with “water on the brain”, grew ten extra teeth, stutters and has a lisp. He also has the most engaging voice I have read in a long time. Early in the book, after telling how skinny he used to be, he goes on to say,
“But my hands and feet were huge. My feet were a size eleven in third grade! With my big feet and pencil body, I looked like a capital L walking down the road.”
Life on the reservation was hard for Arnold and his speech difficulties made it even harder, as you’ll see in the following passage:
“You wouldn’t think there is anything life threatening about speech impediments, but let me tell you, there is nothing more dangerous than being a kid with a stutter and a lisp.
A five-year-old is cute when he lisps and stutters. Heck, most of the big-time kid actors stuttered and lisped their way to stardom.
And jeez, you’re still fairly cute when you’re a stuttering and lisping six-, seven-, and eight-year-old, but it’s all over when you turn nine and ten.
After that, your stutter and lisp turn you into a retard.
. . .
Do you know what happens to retards on the rez?
We get beat up.
At least once a month.
Yep, I belong to the Black-Eye-Of-the-Month Club.”
This book, based on the author’s own experiences, is beautifully written. Alexie’s humor makes his insights all the more striking. And the illustrations by Ellen Forney are inspired. She depicts the cartoons Arnold creates throughout the story. At the end of the first chapter, Arnold speaks of these drawings,
“I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.”
I think he is right about the world where many of my students live. I also think we all – speech therapists, teachers, parents and writers – can build a variety of lifeboats through compassion, encouragement, instruction and by each using our own voice.
A friend of mine recommended I read a book called, When Women Were Birds, by Terry Tempest Williams. There were many reasons she thought I might enjoy it, one of which was the author’s telling about her time spent with a speech therapist. You see, Terry had a lisp and so, when she was in fourth grade she went to therapy while other students played tag at recess. A couple of months back I mentioned David Sedaris’ trips to see his speech therapist; he didn’t paint a pretty picture. That made it especially pleasant to read of Ms. Williams’ experiences. After teaching proper tongue placement, the therapist had Terry practice “s” sounds by reading poetry, like this stanza of Emily Dickinson’s:
Some keep the Sabbath going to church:
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.
In the process of perfecting her “s”, Terry learned “how to hear the sounds of words and find delight in the rhythm and musicality of certain combinations.” In addition, Terry developed her own voice.
Now I want to back up a moment because the term “voice” has many different meanings. As a speech therapist, I sometimes work with students with voice disorders. That might mean their voice is raspy because of vocal polyps or nodules and they need to see an ear, nose and throat specialist in addition to a speech therapist. Obviously, that is not the sort of “voice problem” Ms. Williams was referring to when she said,
A speech impediment is an excellent way to lose your voice, especially
in fourth grade.
She went on to describe being teased and then stated,
But the sure remedy to criticism and ridicule was a simple one:
keep quiet.
I’m afraid this sort of “lost voice” is common among children (and adults for that matter) and it comes not just from speech impediments, but from a variety of differences or perceived differences. We can help those in our care find their voices or as Terry Tempest Williams experienced,
I did not find my voice – my voice found me through the compassion
of a teacher who understood how poetry transforms us through the
elegance and lyricism of language.
That certainly inspires me to use more poetry and a variety of other great literature with my students. And it makes me wonder – perhaps all effective teachers, parents and writers are actually providing voice therapy.
Imitation is one of the ways young children learn to speak. They hear sounds and echo them back. Of course, it is a lot more complicated than that, but without a model to follow, they won’t start talking. And it’s not just words they imitate – they imitate our actions too. Which reminds me of a story of my children as preschoolers. A good friend had been watching them for me while I ran to the grocery store. When I came to pick them up, she told me, “They played house while you were gone.”
My four-year-old had said to his brother, “You can be Dad and go to work. I’ll be Mom.” He then grabbed a book, sat on the couch and pretended to read.”
I was a little embarrassed by that story (but not much). It wasn’t my habit to sit on the couch all day with a good book in hand. I kept the house fairly clean and played with my kids regularly; but I also spent a lot of time reading with them. Maybe that’s what he was imitating.
It is not just children who learn by imitation, many artists have learned new skills by copying the masters and I’m sure there are writers who have done the same. In Mary Oliver’s, A Poetry Handbook, she devotes a whole chapter to imitation. She said,
“Every child is encouraged to imitate. But in the world of writing it is originality that is sought out, and praised, while imitation is the sin of sins.
Too bad. I think if imitation were encouraged much would be learned well that is now learned partially and haphazardly.”
I like her advice (and love her poetry.) I heard something similar in a writing class so I went to an old master, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and used his poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a pattern to follow. I started with a couple of stanzas and modeled mine after his. Here are Coleridge’s verses:
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken -
The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
And here are my stanza’s following his structure and tone:
But in the cloud, the misty shroud,
there grew a mournful sound;
a wind that breathed through wings to weave
a wailing all around.
The wind was on, the wind was in,
the wind was all between.
It whipped and crashed, and blew and lashed,
as scythe upon the green.
Once I wrote those stanzas a story started forming in my mind and so I wrote a whole poem based on Coleridge’s albatross. I won’t share the entire ballad because it is rather long, but this gives you an idea of the exercise.
Imitation is a good beginning for writing and for language development but I don’t want to stop there with my own creations. And I don’t want my students to stop there. When children rely only on verbal imitation they are using echolalia – an automatic response with very little meaning. I need to help them move past imitation so they can communicate their own thoughts, ideas and desires.
And if they imitate my actions, I’m thinking, sitting on the couch (or at my desk) reading a good book isn’t such a bad idea.
A couple months ago, I heard a knock at my speech room door. Normally, kids don’t knock; they just charge up my ramp and burst in at their scheduled time. When I answered the door, one of my first-grade students was standing there, “Hello, I’m Jordan “two”, Jordan “one” had to stay home today. I’m new to this school.”
Of course I invited him in, and he invited me into his imaginary world and into his current internal story. He informed me that Jordan “one” had to stay home to take care of a visiting elephant – it had escaped from a zoo. Since the others in his speech group were away on a field trip, I had time to hear the whole story, help Jordan write it down, and introduce vocabulary such as “pretend” and “imagination.”
I think Jordan has a future in writing fiction but he struggles in school. He has a very difficult time listening and following directions. Once he told me his mind was “all buzzy” so he couldn’t pay attention in class, but I’ve noticed, when he begins to actually hear a story, or create one of his own, he focuses. Tapping into his imagination seems to help him become more receptive to new information.
Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” That gives me hope for Jordan and others like him.
And speaking of imagination, one of the imaginative books Jordan loved this year was, Creepy Monsters, Sleepy Monsters, by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Kelly Murphy. He wasn’t alone - all of my speech students loved this story. It is written in verse and creates possibilities for vocabulary growth, rhyming, phonemic awareness and speech practice. The illustrations are adorable. When I read this one to my students, they inspected every monster on every page, counting monster eyes and legs. They laughed when they spotted items they could relate to – like backpacks, swing sets, and monster beds that were not much different from their own. The worms in the salad and sandwiches grossed them out but they wouldn’t let me turn the page – they were so engrossed!
When school is back in session in the fall, I hope I’ll hear another knock at my door, and when it opens, I hope it will open to a world of new stories.
The word “relatives” came up in a story during one of my speech sessions and I asked my students if they knew what it meant. They didn’t so we discussed aunts, uncles, brothers, cousins . . .
A student interrupted me, “Don’t talk about cousins – my cousin moved away.” She buried her face in her folded arms.
Another child jumped in and said, “My six chickens’ birthday is August 7 – all of them. I don’t know why.”
Now I’m not sure where this came from. It was stretching the topic of “relatives” and one of the things we work on in speech is staying on topic, but I couldn’t resist asking, “So did they all hatch on the same day?” and he said, “no – they hatcheded on different days in June. I don’t know why their birthday is August 7. Do you know when mine is?”
He was disappointed I didn’t because he didn’t know either. I assured him I’d find out before I saw him next and then tried to rein this conversation in and return to the subject of relatives.
I had the perfect book for the topic, The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Stephen Gammell. It doesn’t use the words “cousin,” “aunt,” or “uncle” but there are a multitude of them and they fill most pages so it was easy to introduce the vocabulary. This charming story tells of a rural family leaving their Virginia farm to visit relatives.
The story begins,
“It was the summer of the year the relatives came. They came up from Virginia.”
. . .
“They left at 4:00 in the morning when it was still dark, before even the birds were awake.”
They drove all day and into the night . . .”
When they arrived, “it was hugging time.” And the hugs seemed to go on forever as the family passed each other around from one set of arms to the next. When bedtime came there weren’t enough to go around, so beds were shared and floor-space filled. Arms and legs draped neighboring bodies as they squeezed together to sleep.
The illustrations in this book are color pencil drawing with personality. They have warmth, humor, and joy – even the car looks exuberant about the trip.
I understand the feeling. I just returned from a fabulous road-trip to see my family and many of my students are doing the same. Some are traveling all the way to Mexico and others have relatives visiting them. I imagine we’ll have a wide variety of stories to share in the fall. And speaking of stories, if I ever find out why those chickens celebrate their birthday on August 7, I’ll let you know. (I’m hoping I’ll be invited to their birthday party.)
2 Comments on Relatives and Road-trips, last added: 7/7/2012
I’m away on vacation and will return to my regularly scheduled posting next weekend. But until then, I hope you'll enjoy a few quotes and photographs.
"The human soul needs beauty even more than it needs bread."
-D.H. Lawrence
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| From our garden to our kitchen table. |
"A writer's brain is like a magician's hat. If you're going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first."
-Louis L'Amour
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| Bluff trail in Northern California |
“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”
- Samuel Johnson
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| Reading by the river. |
"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."
-Albert Einstein
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| An evening view. |
I hope you are able to surround yourself with beauty and a tall stack of engaging books. I also hope that we can all “awaken joy in creative expression” within our children, students, friends and selves.
It wasn’t all that long ago I had a group of kindergarten students in my speech room and I muttered, “Now where’d I put my tea?”
One of my students who is always a willing helper (and has an extremely difficult time sitting still) hopped up, darted around the table, circled a standing bookshelf and scrambled over to my desk before I could explain, it was a rhetorical question. He bounced back to our group with my room key in his hand. “I found it!”
He looked so triumphant, I didn’t mention his error but let my tea grow cold and pulled out a listening game.
Listening is a prerequisite skill for speech development. Kids have to hear the difference between various sounds before they can pronounce them correctly. Listening is also critical to building vocabulary, sentence structures, and other language concepts. And some might say listening is a prerequisite for good writing. One popular piece of advice is to listen in on conversations and jot them down when you’re working on dialog. (You have to be discrete when you follow this suggestion.)
And what of poets? Don’t you believe when Longfellow wrote, The Sound of the Sea, he spent some time listening to it? Note the rhythm of the sea reflected in these lines - you can almost hear the rush of waves over the beach:
“The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;”
I plan to keep teaching my students to listen for small differences, like the difference between “tea” and “key” or “thumb” and “some”. But my hope is they’ll listen for more as they grow older. I’m hoping they’ll listen to, and recognize, the beauty of language; the tone of voice, which speaks a warning or a warm welcome; nuances and subtleties. I’m hoping their listening skills will provide a foundation for good relationships – from political to personal.
If you’d like to practice your own listening skills, take a listen to this 12-second clip from behind my back fence. The wind is rasping over the microphone on my iPad but you’ll hear birds chirping. Listen closely. There are sea lions barking in the background.
School is out! This week has been a whirlwind of activity – class parties, field trips and visiting pets. My speech groups ended last week so I had a chance to pop into a few classrooms and share a new book. I had a pleasant surprise on my doorstep Wednesday after school – Tons of Trucks a new book by Sue Fliess, illustrated by Betsy Snyder. It arrived just in time to share with students before our summer vacation. It was a hit.
The rhythm and rhymes in this book are a pleasure to read,
“Tons of trucks,
before our eyes,
in every color, shape,
and size!
Strong trucks
Big trucks
Scoop and dig trucks!
Old trucks
New trucks
ARMY CREW trucks.”
Every page has a moveable part: a flap to lift, a tab to pull (revealing top secrets in the army truck), and a spinning wheel to turn the tank of a cement truck. It ends with a hushed evening scene where sleepy travelers pull in to a rest stop. Young listeners may find the restful ending a nice way to end their day.
I read this book to a few kindergarten classes and they were enthralled. When I asked the first class how they liked it, they gave a loud cheer. (That’s always a good sign even though it is not a behavior teachers encourage.) In the next room, the students said the book was, “fantastic,” “great,” and they “loved it.” In the resource room, one student felt Buttons, the resource rat, should have a chance to see the book and so he did.
Abby thought Lucky, the goat visiting her classroom, should have a turn and so we took the book to room 44. She read to Lucky and a classroom of lucky students who were sitting at her feet.
We didn’t want to leave any visitors out and so our resource specialist, Beth Kirkley, read the book with Lucy on her lap. Look how captivated that puppy is!
This book doesn’t need cute kids and animals to make it adorable. It
is that all on its own. The illustrations are bright and engaging. The opportunities to interact with the story made it all the more appealing to our students. For younger kids, it introduces vocabulary and concepts: shapes, colors, and contrasts such as, “in and out,” “open and close,” “up and down” and others.
It isn’t easy to tell who is more excited about summer vacation, the students or the teachers (or maybe the class pets.) But we’ll all carry with us, good memories of the school ye
A friend of mine once told about a visit she had with her grandchildren. Early one morning, while she was in the kitchen, three-year-old Rylan came in and asked her for some apple slices. His voice was bass-low and raspy so she said, “Rylan, you lost your voice. Where did it go?” She turned back to slice his apple but soon noticed him wandering around the kitchen, head down, searching. When he lifted his face, she saw a tear coming down his cheek.
“What’s the matter, Rylan?”
More tears fell and he squawked, “I can’t find my voice.”
He was sure if he looked into all the corners, under the table or in the back of a cupboard, he was going to find it.
That misunderstanding might make us smile but children are not the only ones who get confused over language. A few weeks ago, one of my coworkers announced in the teacher’s room, her son had lost his first tooth. Most everyone in the room looked worried. Someone said, “How sad - he won’t be able to put it under his pillow.” His mom quickly explained that he still had his tooth and was now wearing it around his neck in a plastic tooth-shaped holder.
Multi-meaning words and figures of speech can bring to mind some unusual pictures if we misinterpret them. A second grade class put on a play this week and one of my students was extremely worried about performing. Before the play, I met him outside the stage door to give him a few words of encouragement. I had to stop myself from saying, “Break a leg.”
This year I discovered a great resource to introduce kids to multi-meaning words: Chopsticks by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated by Scott Magoon. It is filled with clever humor. My students didn’t catch all the word play, but they learned, and the story entertained us all. Take a look at a few quotes:
“No one stirred, not even Spoon.”
“At first, Chopstick was just plain stumped.” (The illustration shows him standing on a cutting board that looks like a stump of wood.)
“Knife knew this revelation called for a toast.” (Knife is pictured holding a slice of toast.) “He was sharp that way.”
What a fun book – this one was a hit with my students and a good teaching tool “to boot.” (Don’t you wonder where that phrase came from?)
I know many school districts are already out for the year but we have one week left. As summer approaches I’m already making plans to hike a few trails, take a couple short trips and get lost in several good books. I just hope I don’t get lost on the trips or trip over the stack of books collecting next to my favorite reading chair.
Last weekend my husband and I went for a drive. We followed the directions given to us and started out just fine - heading east. But the road took us around several bends, up a hill or two and through a tunnel of overhanging branches and so when we came to a Y in the road we paused (not long enough as it turned out) and checked our notes, which read, “Turn east at the Y.” As I said, we were heading east when we started and now as the road split sharply to our right and sharply to our left, we had no idea which way was east. Well, that is not exactly true. We had an idea, just not the right one (even with a 50-50 chance of choosing correctly.) Eventually we made it to our intended destination but the experience reminded me of a seminar I listened to recently.
A friend of mine, Sandy Glickfeld, heard Stanford cognitive psychologist Lera Bordoitsky speak at a conference a couple weeks ago and had high praise for her presentation. When I heard the subject matter I was intrigued. So I googled Ms. Bordoitsky and found a link to “The Long Now Foundation” with her seminar entitled, “How Language Shapes Thought.” It was fascinating. One of the stories she told was about a small Aboriginal community, Pormpuraaw, located in northern Australia, where the people have a great sense of direction (unlike the people in the paragraph above.) She told of asking a five-year old girl in the village to point north, and the child did so, accurately, with no hesitation. That skill was common to the whole community. Ms. Boroditsky made the same request to a group of distinguished scholars at Stanford University and they pointed in all possible directions. That made me feel a little better about our experience at the Y in the road.
The reason for these vastly different abilities, according to Lera Bordoitsky, is language. In Pormpurraw, people use direction words such as northeast or southwest instead of the terms left and right. So they might say something like, “Put your name in the northwest corner of your paper, just south of the date.” Of course the students would all need to be facing the same direction for those instructions to work. (This wasn’t one of Ms. Bordoitsky’s examples but you get the idea.)
She did say, “in Pormpuraaw one must always stay oriented, just to be able to speak properly.” No wonder these people had a great sense of direction. But the interesting thing about this story, and others she told, was, as Ms Bordoitsky pointed out, when you teach people a new way to talk, you teach them a new way to think. The Pormuraaw people didn’t just learn the vocabulary for north and south; they developed an intuitive knowledge about where those directions were. In Russia, where they have more than one word for the color blue, they actually perceive the different shades of blue more rapidly than English speakers. And that made me think about some of my students who struggle with their native language. How does this struggle affect their thinking?
Most of my students wouldn’t have the slightest idea where North is on our campus but that knowledge is rarely required of them. They are, however, expected to understand prepositions, multi-meaning words, sequencing words and directions like, “Before you open your book, put your name on your paper in the upper right hand corner.” Some language-delayed kids listening to those directions would be as lost as my husband and I at the Y in the road.
I found Ms. Bordoitsky’s seminar fascinating and also very encouraging. If by teaching kids a new way to talk, we are teaching them a new way to think, then speech therapy can have a huge impact on their lives. So too, does children’s literature, which introduces new words, concepts and builds language skills on so many levels.
My hope for my students is to teach them new vocabulary so when they look at the world around them, they can actually perceive the different shades of blue, understand prepositions so they know where they stand in the
Earlier this week I recorded a language sample of one of my students to check on her progress and set new goals. If you are not a speech therapist you might not know this is a common way to assess a child’s language skills; it is a nice supplement to standardized tests. I listen to the child’s grammar, vocabulary, observe whether they use language in a socially appropriate way, and often I’m very entertained in the process.
Like this week when a kindergartener told me, “I goed to the field trip and then I saw a dragon this tall.” She held her hand about two feet from the ground and added, “A real huge one. It flies. It blows hard. It breathes fire. And then I saw a turtle. It was this tall.” Once again, she held her hand about two feet from the ground. I think the turtle and the dragon were related. I wish I could have gone on the field trip!
Another student told me, “I’m gonna move and when I do, you’re gonna have to build a robot ME cause you’re gonna miss me,” and he was right.
Speaking of missing, the same student told me, “I miss Bob the dog, he’s in heaven now. He died when he was 91, in 1491. I’ll never see him again. He’s wrapped in my frog blanket. He was yellow.” It was a tender moment so I didn’t question the year of Bob’s birth. But the student went on to tell me about his own. “Did you know I was born on my birthday? March 9this my birthday and I was born on it.”
These students keep me entertained, enchanted and encouraged by their growth and willingness to work on speech sounds, vocabulary and our pesky grammar. And speaking of grammar, I just finished reading Inside Out & Back Again, by Thanhha Lai. This middle grade novel, written in verse, tells the story of ten-year old Ha, who, with her family, flees Vietnam as Saigon falls. The struggles she went through to assimilate into the small Alabama town were due in part to her struggles in learning a new language.
“First Rule
Brother Quang says
add an s to nouns
to mean more than one
even if there’s
already an s
sitting there.
Glass
Glass-es
All day
I practice
squeezing hisses
through my teeth.
Whoever invented
English
must have loved
snakes.”
Later, when
I fell in love with Moose when I read his book. Some might say “Z is for Moose” is actually Kelly Bingham’s and Paul Zelinsky’s book but I’m afraid Moose took it over.
Initially I thought this story would be too confusing for my younger students who are struggling to learn the alphabet but I soon discovered the story is rich with possibilities not just to entertain but to teach. The book started out like many alphabet books, “A is for Apple, B is for Ball” but Moose took center stage on the “D” page and it took my Kindergarten students a few minutes to realize he didn’t belong there. After we tried calling him Doose, they understood and they thought it was hilarious. Next we tried to figure out who should be strutting their stuff on that page (they didn’t see the duck who had been shoved aside.) We came up with several options: dog, dinosaur, dolphin, dancing dishes.
This book created so many learning opportunities. Besides introducing the alphabet and encouraging phonemic awareness, it was a great tool for sequencing and predicting. When Moose was on a rampage, frightening an owl, squishing a piece of pie, scattering it’s contents across a two-page spread, scrambling the letters, decimating words, the kids thought he was “crazy-mad”. Then they set about trying to figure out what letters he had destroyed by reviewing the sequence of the alphabet. By the end of the story, the kids decided Moose deserved to be on every page and so we started our own alphabet book, designed entirely for Moose. From Athletic Moose to Zany Moose, the ideas practically bubbled up from my students: “Fantastic Moose”, “Needy Moose,” “Pizza-delivering Moose,” “Quarreling Moose” to name a few.
This was a natural vocabulary building activity. When one student suggested “Bashful Moose” we talked about what that word means and decided it didn’t quite fit his personality so we changed our page to, “B is for Bashful Moose – NOT!”
One of my first grade students illustrated the first page. Take a look at Athletic Moose:
Those two round things at the bottom of the page are trampolines in case you can’t tell.
When I was carrying “Z is for Moose” into the teacher’s room, one of the Kindergarten teachers looked at the book and said, “Isn’t that confusing for the kids?” By the time I finished sharing what my student
A few weeks ago, during School Library Month, I posted about our elementary school library and shared a few pictures in hopes of generating support to keep ours open and healthy. Thank you all who responded to that plea! One response we especially enjoyed was a care package full of books from author Cynthia Leitich Smith. She included one of her own and I held onto it long enough to introduce it to my students before passing it on to our librarian.
This rollicking fun picture book is about a child with a voice larger than the state of Texas where the author lives. His parents, Mama and Daddy Loudly, named him Holler because he cried so loud.
“So LOUD that the pecans fell from the pecan trees and the prickly pear cacti sprouted more needles. So LOUDthat every hound dog in the county rolled up his ears and tossed back his head to bay. So LOUD the armadillos woke from their naps and the turkey vultures dropped their feathers.”
Talk about a whopping good tall tale – Holler Loudly is so GOOD that the pages practically turn themselves. So GOOD that the words flew out of the book and painted pictures in the minds of my students. So GOOD that the kids decided they’d write their own tall tales – and that’s no exaggeration (the last part anyway).
Holler’s voice is loud enough to take the roof off his house, send a catfish soaring and cause a hog stampede at the state fair. The illustrations by Barry Gott capture the mood perfectly and enhance the humor with cows and cars flying through the air on the wind of Holler’s voice. There’s a nice twist at the end of the book when his voice stops a tornado from destroying the town.
This was a fun book to use in speech. It gave the opportunity to compare and contrast, practice speech sounds, introduce new vocabulary words, and discuss pragmatics (the social use of language such as appropriate volume). When I showed my students Cynthia Leitich Smith had signed our book, they looked incredulous. Suddenly they understood the author was a real person. And if one real person could write a book so could another, even if that person was only five years old. I suggested we write the author a thank you note; they thought it was a nice idea, but first, they wanted to write their own books. All three students in this kindergarten group scrambled to gather their supplies. They folded, colored and wrested a few words onto their pages while dictating tales more elaborate than they were ready to write on their own. Their stories were so cute they could charm the chalk right off the chalkboard and set the desks t
Did you know May is Better Speech and Hearing Month? The purpose is to raise awareness about communication disorders and to promote treatment. I’m a speech therapist and I think our profession is worth celebrating; however, I’m not sure everyone would see it that way. Take for example, David Sedaris. In his book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, his description of speech therapy was anything but pretty. I cringed (and laughed) when I read his description of the “agent” coming to take him away,
“My capture had been scheduled to go down at exactly 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon.”
The agent, if you haven’t already guessed, was his speech therapist coming to his fifth-grade classroom to take him out (not as in “rub him out” although the humiliation may have made him feel that was her intent). David went on to describe his hilarious, if somewhat painful, memories of speech sessions. He had a lisp and so he pronounced “s” as “th.” Besides embarrassing him, his speech therapist had him read, “childish s-laden text recounting the adventures of seals or settlers named Sassy or Samuel.”
Ooh, that hurts. I hate to admit it but I’ve been guilty of inflicting my students with plot-less stories, just to give them a lot of practice pronouncing their target sounds. But that was a long time ago. I have since discovered an abundant supply of fabulous books to read, filled with whatever target sounds I’m looking for. For example, if I had a fifth grade student with a lisp, I could open The Cheshire Cheese Cat: a Dickens of a Tale, by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright. On the very first page there are plenty of “s” sounds for practice.
“He was the best of toms. He was the worst of toms.
Fleet of foot, sleek and solitary, Skilley was a cat among cats. Or so he would have been, but for a secret he had carried since his early youth.”
Look at all those “s” sounds - and what a delightful way to practice them. The first lines of this book drew me in immediately with its nod to Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. I am a fan of Charles Dickens, animal stories, humor and good writing, so this book was a hit with me right from the start. I haven’t had the opportunity to use it with my students yet, but I have “great expectations” for doing so.
The secret Skilley hides is his extreme fondness for cheese;
and he does not eat mice. These qualities lead him into a unique relationship with the throng of mice who inhabit Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a pub which is a gathering place for famous authors in 19th-century London. One of these authors is Charles Dickens himself. In this story, Dickens is struggling with a severe case of writers’ block. Eventually, he is assisted by Pip, a literate and literary mouse. This romping tale is full of adventure and challenges. The tension builds when a conniving cat arrives and the alliance between Skilley and the mice grows strong. The story has twists and turns, plots and subplots, and captivating characters. Described as being suitable for children age eight and up, I think Dickens’ fans of all ages will enjoy the humorous use of familiar lines and phrases. In one conversation, Skilley and Pip spoke of “our mutual friend;” there was “artful dodging” of passing cabs; and when the barmaid renames the conniving cat, Oliver, it brought “an unwelcome twist” to the story.
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The Cheshire Cheese Cat and other May Musings as of 5/5/2012 10:11:00 AM
Thursday was “Poem in your Pocket” day and we decided to celebrate in a big way in the speech room. (That is a very large paper pocket in case you can’t tell.) I filled it with poems for my younger students and they were delighted to dig around and find a special poem - and to make it their own.
They added a few decorations and tucked their chosen poem into their pants pockets. Of course they didn’t stop there. They added more poems to the paper pocket, hoping to fill it to overflowing.
Poems are a wonderful way to introduce new vocabulary, rhyming, humor, and even speech practice with the catchy lines kids love to repeat. There are many entertaining books of poetry for children but this week I especially enjoyed introducing my students to
Book Speak! by Laura Purdie Salas, Illustrated by Josee Bisaillon.
My students were drawn to this book from the moment they looked at the cheery cover. They immediately wanted to hop a ride on the hooked-handle of the umbrella. And when I turned to the poem, “Calling All Readers” they were entranced by the illustrations and the words,
“I’ll tell you a story.
I’ll spin you a rhyme.
I’ll spill some ideas-
And we’ll travel through time.
Their ideas spilled out in a rush: places they’d travel, which balloon (or dragon) they’d ride, and what they’d see. This book is full of poems about books and it made me want to spend this weekend curled up with some of my favorites, which is what I plan to do once I finish this post.
Poetry month is drawing to a close but there will be no shortage of excellent children’s books to read. Last Saturday I attended the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference in Rocklin, CA. It was wonderful day. As usual, I came away with fresh insights and inspirations for my own writing and was introduced to books that I’ll soon be using with my students.
I hope you have found more poems to love during this poetry month. And I hope you remember to remove them from your pocket before laundry day!
Mine officially started on Monday of this week when my husbandwalked out the door to go to work, and I didn’t. The first thing I did tocelebrate my vacation was to gather an armful of flowers from our garden andplace them on my coffee table. Take a look:
The second thing I did was grab my backpack chair, fill itsoversized pocket with books, put on my hiking boots, and head to Big River. Itis a short seven-minute drive from my home. Here is where I settled for a timeof reading, writing and contemplation:
The second day I met a friend for breakfast and the meal wasalmost too pretty to eat, almost.
It was big enough to share and have leftovers, but wedidn’t. We didn’t have leftovers that is - we DID share.
My husband took off the last half of the week so we could travelto the wine country for a stay in a Bed & Breakfast. We spent our morningsand evenings sitting on the deck enjoying the pastoral view, reading, chatting,and writing.
Yesterday morning, sitting behind that coffee cup you seeabove, I reread poems from a book by Mary Oliver and that reminded me of apoetry exercise I learned in a writing class. I enjoy the way it helps me feel therhythm of language used by poets I admire. If you’d like to try it, start witha line or stanza in a poem and exchange each word with another of yourchoosing, using the same part of speech, noun for noun, verb for verb. Here isone I wrote yesterday using four lines from Mary Oliver’s poem, Lightning:
Her words:
The oaksshone
gaunt gold
on the lip
of thestorm before
the windrose,
My words:
What a wonderful idea! I can’t let this one slip by. The AmericanAssociation of School Librarians established April as “School Library Month”and their theme this year is, “You belong @ your library.” Icouldn’t agree more.
I have wonderful childhood memories of my weekly trips toour school library. That’s where I first met, The Black Stallion, King of theWind and my favorite, Justin Morgan Had a Horse. The librarian very patientlyhelped me search for the perfect book each week, even when I was the last one inmy class to come to a decision. I remember very clearly the day she told me I’dread every horse story in the library and gently suggested I move on to anothertopic, like “dogs.”
Library day was the highlight of my week and I see the sameexcitement in my students when they tell me about their library books. Unfortunately,they can no longer check them out every week due to cutbacks. Next year, thingscould become even more dismal. It breaks my heart to see the budget cuts in ourschools. All programs are hurting, and all are important, but I feel it isimperative that we safeguard our school library. If we expect our students to wantto learn to read and write, we need to tempt them with good literature and warmassociations with books. When my children were young, they could hardly wait tostart school. And the reason they wanted to go to school was to learn to readall those marvelous stories they’d heard from books. We need to keep thatyearning alive in our students.
Take a look at some of my speech kids enjoying (and showing off) their library books:
I want to see these happy faces remain excited about our library and the treasures they find there. In hopes of generating funds to extend the hours and keep it open in the coming year, I am donating all the proceeds of a book I’ve written, to our library.
When the wind rattlesKristy's window she is certain a ghost has come into her room. She repeatedlycalls her mother who assures her there is no ghost but still Kristy cannotsleep. From the beginning to the surprising ending, children will have theopportunity to learn the letter “g” and to pronounce its sound as they “help”tell the story.
Besides providing entertainment, The Ghostly Night willencourage pre-reading skills and articulation development in young children. Ihope you’ll consider supporting our library by purchasing this book or passingthe information along to other
National Poetry Month is here and poetry is everywhere - on websites, blogs, in our classrooms, and hanging in the halls. The beautiful and playful language found in many children’s poetry books provides a wealth of material for building vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and giving students practice pronouncing their sounds.
Yesterday I brought in a book of poems by Jane Yolen, Birds of a Feather. Jason Stemple’s photographs accompanying the poems are so close-up and crisp they practically fly off the page. My first-grade students snatched this one off the table before our speech session began. Next time I’ll have to bring in several copies – they fought over this book. They loved the perfect pairing of words and photos – the Mohawk on the Kingfisher, the cheery chickadee, and the group of strutting “Oystercatchers on Parade.” After listening to Jane Yolen’s poems they wanted to write their own. I thought they’d try for bird poems but no; they expanded the theme to all animals. One student wrote,
I like yellow monkeys
Running and playing.
Then he said, “That’s kind of a poem,” and I had to agree. One of my kindergarten students dictated a poem about his cat. I’m not sure of the spelling, but here is the closest I could come:
Sammy de clonie de ponie
She scratches me
And jumps
on the kitchen counter.
I liked his creative rhymes!
Another group of kindergarteners were excited when they discovered the names of their pets rhymed. We worked together to create this poem about their animals:
Luke has a hamster named Taco
And Zayd has a cat named Paco
Avery’s bird is Neena
And Hailey’s rat is Tina.
We hope these pets will never meet
For fur might fly and one might eat
a pretty pet, a favorite friend,
and give our poem a sad, sad end.
You’ll find better-crafted poetry in Jane Yolen’s book but my students had fun collaborating with me on this one. If you’d like to share your poems or those of your kids or students, I’d love to see them.
Have a wonderful Easter and Passover!
Last week I posted about fiction and since I don’t want to be unfair to all those fabulous non-fiction writers and enthusiasts, I thought I’d mention non-fiction this week. Some of my students would choose non-fiction over fiction any day. My son was like that. In his preschool years, during our weekly library trips, he’d head straight to the nonfiction section while I browsed through shelves of fictional picture books. We’d leave the library with a brown-paper grocery-bag filled to the brim. At least half of those books were non-fiction. His love for information started earlier, at home. In a dimly lit hallway, tucked away on the bottom row of a bookshelf, I stored all my college textbooks. One day I noticed a book from that shelf lying open on the floor. I put it back only to find it out again the next day and the day after that. It was always the same book - my speech science textbook - and always opened to a page of diagrams. It wasn’t long before my three-year old son began asking me to read it aloud for his bedtime story. He’d look at all the pictures of the inside workings of the mouth, brain and ears and ask me to read the captions. I thought it was rather boring but he loved it.
Like my son, many of my students love to read non-fiction. And with poetry month starting next week, what better non-fiction book to introduce than a biography of a poet. Jennifer Bryant’s, A River of Words, is a perfect fit for me. I love it and think my students will too. It describes the life and poetry of William Carlos Williams. The illustrations by Melissa Sweet are an inspired match - words become art and splash into the river, cover the walls and line scraps of paper. Bryant’s lyrical writing mirrors the tone and texture of Williams’ life and poetry. When she describes Williams’ childhood love of nature, and specifically of the Passaic River, she made me want to dip into that river and absorb its rhythms. “The water went slipping and sliding over the smooth rocks, then poured in a torrent over the falls, then quieted again below” – beautiful prose depicting a beautiful life. From his childhood love of the outdoors to his adult years as a busy doctor and poet, he lived in a way that inspires. I can hardly wait to introduce this book to my students.
I’m sure my son would enjoy it too. He is grown now and loves fiction, nonfiction and poetry in equal measure but I’ll never forget those early years when he was captivated by non-fiction. Eventually he moved on from my speech science book to wanting ones about trucks and farm animals but the information stuck with him for awhile. I was surprised one day when we went into a bakery with friends. We rarely gave our children sweets so he wasn’t familiar with the rows of pastries in the glass case. He scanned the options then looked up at the young woman behind the counter and said, “I want the one shaped like a cochlea.” You should have seen the look on her face! (He was right, by the way; the pastry is shaped like a cochlea.) He had never seen a cinnamon roll before but he had seen illustrations of the inner ear and he learned this vocabulary from a non-fiction book.
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What a wonderful story! It may become a classic.
Janet, thank you for your kind comments.
What a lovely story. Thanks for linking up to The Children's Bookshelf.
Thank you for dropping by.
A moving story, Jeanette! I love that you were stirred to write a fable-like story of cultural acceptance. We need more of those.
Thank you, Sue!
Great story! I can just see it illustrated and on our library shelves. Thanks for all your posts connecting your kids, teaching, and children's books. I always learn and often get a smile or chuckle.
Thank you for your kind words. I especially appreciate your vision of my story on library shelves.