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Welcome, Year of the Rat!

To help you celebrate, here are a couple of new books we can recommend…

Grace Lin has a sequel just out to her delightful Year of the Dog - called, appropriately enough, Year of the Rat. We’ll have our own review of it soon, in the meantime, you can read what Grace herself says about it here.

You can read here about another new book by Grace, this time a picture-book called Bringing in the New Year. There are some good “Lunar New Year” links on this post from Wild Rose Reader too.

And here are some more Chinese New Year picture books reviewed by PaperTigers:
The Year of the Rat: Tales from the Chinese Zodiac by Oliver Chin, illustrated by Miah Alcorn,;
The Great Race / The Story of the Chinese Zodiac by Dawn Casey, illustrated by Anne Wilson;
The Day the Dragon Danced by Kay Haugaard, illustrated by Carolyn Reed Barritt.

Do you have any special favorites you’d like to share with us?

…And a PS - do have a look at Grace Lin’s blog to read about her trip to China last month - there are some great photos too.

AT WILD ROSE READER

A Poem a Day #28: April
A Poem a Day #29: Thoughts of the Wolf as He Descends the Third Little Pig's Chimney
A Poem a Day #30: Full Of… (A List Poem)
A Poem about Poetry Withdrawal: The Morning After
April: A Poem by Janet Wong
Poetry Friday: Spring Is... (In this post, I provide suggestions for poetry to share with children to help inspire them to write their own poems about spring.)


AT THE POETRY FOUNDATION

Dragons Pulling Wagons: The Children’s Poet Laureate on Karla Kuskin’s Children’s Poetry

This article, written by Jack Prelutsky, is about Karla Kuskin, a children’s poet whose poetry I truly admire. The article includes the full texts of three of Kuskin’s poems, including A Bug Sat in A Silver Flower, which was always a favorite with my elementary school students.
All three of the poems posted at the Poetry Foundation can be found in Kuskin's book MOON, HAVE YOU MET MY MOTHER?

From Blossoms, one of my favorite adult poems, was written by Li-Young Lee. It comes from his book ROSE, which was published by Boa Editions in 1986. Rose contains many fine poems, including Eating Together, I Ask My Mother to Sing, and The Weight of Sweetness.

The beginning stanzas of From Blossoms
by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

You can read the rest of the poem here.

A Funny Children’s Poem for Spring

The Worm by Ralph Bergengren was one of my favorite poems to recite to children after spring had arrived each year when I was still teaching.


Here’s how The Worm begins:

When the earth is turned in spring
The worms are fat as anything.

And birds come flying all around
To eat the worms right off the ground.

They like the worms as much as I
Like bread and milk and apple pie…

Go to this page at the website of the Poetry Foundation to read the rest of this humorous verse.

NOTE: The Worm is a good poem to use to show children examples of couplets. It can be found in THE RANDOM HOUSE BOOK OF POETRY FOR CHILDREN.


National Poetry Month at Infoplease

There are lots of links at this site to all manner of things related to poetry—including quotes by poets on poetry, poetry quizzes and crosswords, and lists of U. S. and English Poets Laureate.


At Wild Rose Reader

A Poem a Day #21: Giraffe
A Poem a Day #22: Spring Rain
A Poem a Day #23: Crinkle, Crinkle, My Old Face
A Poem a Day #24: Jack and June (A Nursery Rhyme Parody)
A Poem a Day #25: Beetle (A Haiku)
A Poem a Day #26: Yellow Days
A Poem a Day #27: Cool Pool
Here Is a Poem About…#1
Here Is a Poem About…#1 (Part 2)
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? #1 (Guess right and you’re invited to be my guest at a reading council dinner that will be held at the gorgeous Corinthian Yacht Club in Marblehead, Massachusetts, on May 23rd.)

FAVORITE POEM PROJECT & POETRY INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATORS

The Sixth Annual Poetry Institute for Educators will be held at Boston University from July 16-20, 2007
Application Deadline: May 14, 2007
Read about the 2007 institute here.

NOTE: I participated in the first poetry institute, which was held in 2001. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I got to meet other teachers and school administrators who shared my passion for poetry. We discussed poetry with award-winning poets like Robert Pinsky, a former US Poet Laureate, Mark Doty, David Ferry, and Rosanna Warren. We educators worked in groups (elementary, middle school, and high school) to develop poetry lessons and favorite poem activities for teachers. I still keep in touch with one of the teachers I met at Boston University that summer. We meet several times a year to share and critique each other’s poetry.

You can find Favorite Poem Poetry Lesson Plans here.

You can read a summary of a poetry research project I conducted in my second grade classroom in 1993 here.

A Favorite Poem: On the last day of the 2001 institute, participants were invited to share favorite poems or lessons developed by their groups during the week. I chose to share Naomi Shihab Nye’s Valentine for Ernest Mann. It expresses my feelings about poetry better than I could ever hope to do.


AT WILD ROSE READER

A Poem a Day #14: Snake Soliloquy (A Mask Poem)
A Poem a Day #15: Blue Whale’s Boast (A Mask Poem)
A Poem a Day #16: Just a Scentimental Guy (A Mask Poem)
A Poem a Day #17: Unicorn (An Acrostic Poem)
A Poem a Day #18: Lucky Mary (A Nursery Rhyme Parody)
A Poem a Day #19: Humpty Dumpty on the Hot Seat (A Nursery Rhyme Parody)
A Poem a Day #20: Grizzly Bear (A Mask Poem)
Sunday Brunch with Janet Wong & Company
Interview with Douglas Florian
I Am Looking for a Poem About...#1

Have a great weekend!

As when Elaine Magliaro of Wild Rose Reader emails to tell me that she's written an Acrostic Poem for me... How totally cool is that?


(An acrostic (from the late Greek akróstichon, from ákros, "extreme", and stíchos, "verse") is a poem or other piece of writing in an alphabetic script, in which the first letter, syllable or word of each verse, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text, spells out another message.

And how I wish it were true that my personal physician was the Doctor from Doctor Who !)

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Last Sunday, I launched my solo blog Wild Rose Reader. I will be posting most of my blog articles there from now on—but I will still be writing for Blue Rose Girls now and again. We’d like to keep up the Poetry Friday tradition at BRG.

At Wild Rose Reader, I will be writing about more than poetry. Check out my inaugural post, Welcome to Wild Rose Reader, in which I write about some of my “high hopes” for my new blog.

FOR NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

Taking the lead from Gregory K. at GottaBook, I will also be posting an original poem every day during the month of April at Wild Rose Reader. Click here to view all of the poems I have posted to date.

Click here for my Wild Rose Reader review of NIBBLE NIBBLE, a charming poetry book for very young children. The book, which is beautifully illustrated by Wendell Minor, contains five of the poems from the 1959 edition of Margaret Wise Brown’s book of the same title.

Click here for my review of an outstanding new anthology of poems for very young children: HERE'S A LITTLE POEM.

Check this out: Poem-A-Day for National Poetry Month at the website of the Academy of American Poets. You can even sign up to have a poem emailed to you every day during the month of April.

Click here for Poetry Books Recommended by Horn Book Editors. The list of books is divided into four categories: Picture Books, Intermediate, Young Adult, and Nonfiction.

Jane Kenyon is one of my favorite poets. For this first Poetry Friday during National Poetry Month, I am giving you a link to Let Evening Come, a Kenyon poem that has a special meaning for me. I read it at the funeral of my beloved father-in-law in 1998.


MY INTERVIEW AT 7-IMP