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Today is Judy Sierra’s birthday: librarian, puppeteer, author, poet, and speaker. In Sharron McElmeel’s profile of Sierra we learn that Judy took to poetry like a fish to water. Her mother reminisced about “two-year-old Judy going to her doctor and reciting a Robert Louis Stevenson poem for him. Sierra herself said, "As a child, I was a great fan of Dr. Seuss and Wanda Gag and shared my parents' enthusiasm for Ogden Nash, Cole Porter, and Gilbert and Sullivan." Her father paid her a dollar for every poem she learned by heart. She memorized poems by many poets, including Lewis Carroll and T.S. Eliot. Second-grade reports were written in rhyme.”

Many of her works for children are rhyming picture books that bridge the worlds of poetry and folklore, with a strong dash of humor. She enjoys parodying or spoofing classic children’s rhymes from Mother Goose to “The Night Before Christmas” to “The Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” Sierra has a knack for creating rhymes and rhyming text that are musical and song-like, often injecting a bit of wordplay a well. Look for:

Schoolyard Rhymes: Kids' Own Rhymes for Rope Skipping, Hand Clapping, Ball Bouncing, and Just Plain Fun
Wild About Books
Counting Crocodiles
Antarctic Antics (which was also animated by Weston Woods)
'Twas the Fright Before Christmas
There's a Zoo in Room 22
Thelonius Monster's Sky-High Fly-Pie
Good Night, Dinosaurs
Monster Goose

Sierra worked as a librarian, toured with her own puppet theater, and earned a Ph.D. in Folklore and Mythology Studies from UCLA. Besides her work for children, she has also authored professional books and storytelling and folklore collections for librarians and teachers, including:

The Flannel Board Storytelling Book
Cinderella, part of the Oryx Multicultural Folktale Series
Multicultural Folktales: Stories to Tell Young Children
Nursery Tales Around the World
Fantastic Theater: Puppets and Plays for Young Performers and Young Audiences
Children's Traditional Games
Can You Guess My Name?: Traditional Tales Around the World
Storytellers Research Guide
Mother Goose's Playhouse

Picture credit: http://www.judysierra.net/

Author and folklore collector Alvin Schwartz was born on this date in 1927, in Brooklyn, New York (and died March 14, 1992). Although he may best be known for the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" series, which are among the most frequently challenged books (or book series) according to ALA, he also compiled over two dozen collections of children’s folklore of many types in very kid-friendly formats. Most of these are completely hilarious, such as:

A twister of twists, a tangler of tongues (1972)
Tomfoolery: Trickery and foolery with words (1973)
Cross your fingers, spit in your hat: Superstitions and other beliefs (1974)
There is a carrot in my ear: and other noodle tales (1986)
Busy buzzing bumblebees: and other tongue twisters (1992)
I saw you in the bathroom and other folk rhymes (1999)

Many children—and adults—don’t realize that the silly songs, rollicking rhymes, and nonsense games we learn in early childhood are indeed a form of literature. Folk poetry is the poetry you don’t even realize is poetry. Rhymes on the playground like "Cinderella dressed in yellow" have no known author and yet are familiar to many generations of children. These rhyming verses can also be included in our poetry collections. Books of riddles, chants, tongue twisters, jumprope rhymes, finger plays, handclapping games, autograph sayings and more often contain poetry and verse. What’s more, children are often intrigued to find in print the verses they have heard and known only orally and only in the domain outside of school—at home and at play.

Alvin Schwartz’s collection of uniquely American verse, And the Green Grass Grew All Around (1992) is one of my all-time favorites and has so many wonderful examples that children will enjoy. You may be surprised, for example, to discover that there are second and third verses to poems you knew only one verse of as a child. One of my favorites is a parody of the song, "I've been working on the railroad"-- "I've been working on my homework/ all the live long day/ I've been working on my homework/ just to pass..." (It ends abruptly on purpose!)

For additional examples of children's "folk poetry," look for Iona and Peter Opie’s I saw Esau: The Schoolchild’s Pocketbook (1992) or Virginia Tashjian’s Juba This and Juba That (1969). Authors and collaborators Joanna Cole and Stephanie Calmenson have also created several collections of folk poetry worth knowing about such as Anna Banana: 101 Jump-Rope Rhymes (1989). And Judy Sierra has gathered a gem with Schoolyard Rhymes: Kids' Own Rhymes for Rope Skipping, Hand Clapping, Ball Bouncing, and Just Plain Fun (2005). And for a scholarly analysis of this "genre" look for Poetry's Playground: The Culture of Contemporary American Children's Poetry (Landscapes of Childhood) by Joseph Thomas.

This medium helps validate children’s experiences, link oral and written modes of expression, and invite active, even physical participation. Children can collect other examples on audio or videotape and explore neighborhood, cultural, and linguistic variations. They can translate their English favorites into other languages represented in their community. Older children may enjoy exploring the historical roots of childhood folklore or writing down new and unfamiliar examples.

Picture credit: barkowitz.wordpress.com