I had planned to write reviews of Halloween poetry books for today. I didn’t get around to doing that for a good reason. Yesterday,
Grace Lin and I went to the Wellesley Booksmith to see
Mary Ann Hoberman and
Linda Winston. Mary Ann and Linda are on tour talking about their outstanding new poetry anthology
The Tree That Time Built: A Celebration of Nature, Science, and Imagination. (Click
here to see where Mary Ann and Linda will be in upcoming weeks.)
After their book signing, Mary Ann and Linda invited Grace and me to have dinner with them and Joanne Myszkowski, who was taking them around to different events in Massachusetts. We had a fabulous dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant just two doors down from the book store. We all had a grand time eating and talking. I didn’t return home until 10:30—so I just didn’t have the energy to work on several book reviews. I decided to post an original poem today instead.
Linda Winston & Mary Ann Hoberman
I’m dedicating my poem Dragonfly to Mary Ann and Linda in honor of their new book. Dragonfly is a poem I wrote for Docile Fossil, a collection that I’ve been working on for the past year.
Dragonfly
by Elaine Magliaro
Long, long ago
before dinosaurs
roamed the land
I flew through prehistoric skies,
my glassy wings glistening in sunlight.
Long, long ago
I printed my image
in mud,
then melted into Earth’s memory.
Now
you can see me
stenciled on the stony pages
of time.
Mary Ann, The "Wild Rose," & Linda
You can read about Mary Hoberman Here:
Mary Ann Hoberman Named Children’s Poet Laureate.
Click
here to read some of my
Wild Rose Reader posts about Mary Ann and her poetry.
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At
Blue Rose Girls I have three original double dactyls.
At
Political Verses, I have two new posts this week:
A Poem about the Conservative Bible Project and
Better Duck...It's Dick: A Poem about Dick Cheney's Hunting Prowess.
Kelly has the
Poetry Friday Roundup at Big A, little a.
Button Up! Wrinkled Rhymes
Written by Alice Schertle
Illustrated by Petra Mathers
Harcourt Children’s Books, 2009
Today I have a review of Button Up!: Wrinkled Rhymes by Alice Schertle. I was really excited when I learned many months ago that Schertle had written a new poetry book. I have been an admirer of her work ever since I read How Now, Brown Cow, her first published poetry collection. Button Up! is a delight from start to finish. Schertle's poems are infused with humor and a childlike sense of fun. The illustrations done by Petra Mathers, the perfect complement to Schertle’s text, express the same sense of playfulness and whimsy.
I was especially happy to find that Button Up! was collection of mask poems. (I love mask poems!) Button Up! contains fifteen point-of-view poems in which the author speaks in the voices of shoes, shoelaces, galoshes, a soccer jersey, bicycle helmet, jammies, dress-up clothes, and undies—all of which have their own personal stories to share. The characters wearing the aforementioned footwear, headwear, and clothing are anthropomorphized creatures—pigs, cats, birds, dogs, bears, alligators, etc. Mathers artfully imbues her animals with human facial expressions and body language.
Like Mathers’s animals, Schertle’s poems all have their own “personalities.” Their rhythms and rhyme schemes vary. The book of poems never gets bogged down in a boring “sameness.”
I asked Alice Schertle if there was anything she could tell me about where she got the inspiration for this book, how long it took her to complete the collection, or any other interesting facts she’d like to share about Button Up!.
Alice responded: Button Up! started with one poem, Jennifer's Shoes--and that was years ago. I wrote that one in the course of fiddling with shoe poems in general, liked it, and found it handy to use when I'd talk about mask, or persona poems. Much more recently I began adding to my stash of poems in which kids' jackets and shoelaces and hats are doing the talking and it began to look like a collection. The trick was in finding the duds that children would recognize and trying to give them a bit of individual personality. Once I got going, assembling, choosing and discarding, it probably took half a year. I found myself chuckling as I wrote: always a good sign.
I, too, chuckled as I read the poems in Button Up!. I’m sure you will too!
Here are some tasty tidbits from a few of the book’s poems to give you a flavor of the delicious verses in Button Up!:
From Bob’s Bicycle
Bob’s on his bike
and I’m on Bob.
I’m Bob’s helmet.
I’m on the job.
From Jennifer’s Shoes
We are learning the ways
of Jennifer’s world:
the way that Jennifer’s
toes are curled,
the softness of carpet,
the steepness of stair,
the curve of the rung
under Jennifer’s chair…
From Jack’s Soccer Jersey
When Jack plays soccer we get our kicks.
I’m Jack’s jersey.
I’m number 6.
From Clyde’s Costume
I’m a gingham sheet and I used to sleep
tucked into the guest room bed.
One day—surprise! Clyde cut out eyes
and slipped me over his head.
And here is the first stanza of my favorite poem in the collection—Emily’s Undies:
We’re Emily’s undies
with laces and bows.
Emily shows us
wherever she goes.
She doesn’t wear diapers,
not even to bed.
Now she wears undies
with ruffles instead.
I know my elementary students would have loved Button Up!. Many of them enjoyed writing their own mask poems--and the poems in this collection serve as fine examples. I highly recommend this book.
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GRIZZLY BEAR
I’m grizzly bear. I’m fierce and fat…
And dangerous. Remember that!
My teeth are sharp as sabers.
My curvy claws can cut like saws,
And when I prowl the woods I growl
And frighten all my neighbors.
I rule the land. This forest’s mine!
I ain’t NOBODY’S valentine!
Don’t think that you can be my friend…
My dinner?
Yum!
GULP!
The End
LOOK AT US NOW!
The day we hatched from jellied eggs…
We looked like fish. We had no legs.
We breathed through gills. We had no lungs.
We didn’t have long sticky tongues.
We didn’t look like frogs…for sure.
But then we started to mature.
And day by day we changed and grew.
To tails and gills we bid adieu.
Now we have lungs and four fine limbs…
And we can croak
and jump
AND swim!
SNAKE SOLILOQUY
I’m a slippery slitherer,
silent and sleek,
sliding and slinking
through grasses
I sneak
weaving and winding
legless and low
I slip slyly hidden
wherever I go.
Wending and bending
by stalk, stem, and stone
like a ribbon of muscle
and skin without bone
tongue catching the scent
of a soft, furry prey.
Smells like it’s field mouse
for dinner today!
I love mask poems! I love reading and writing them. I think it’s so much fun to take on the personality and speak in the voice of an animal, element of nature, an inanimate object. In my animal mask poems posted above, I tried to capture different personalities or emotions: The bear is boasting about how tough he is and trying to scare other animals. The frogs are excited about having grown into adults. The snake is speaking quietly about the way he moves—sliding and slinking and sneaking up on prey.
In the following poem, a snail speaks. This poem is meant to be read in the voice of a plodding slowpoke. (I’m sorry that I can’t print the end of the first stanza on Blogger the way it should be.)
I’M SNAIL
I’m snail. I’m slow.
That’s how I go
From place to place.
I never race.
I take my time.
I s l i d e
along
my
trail
of slime.
I have a heavy shell to bear…
But I don’t care.
I never grouse
Because I have to wear
My house.
I just suppose
That’s how it goes…
Some are fast
And some are slow…
And slow is fast
As I can go.
Slow’s the only speed I know.
Writing Mask Poems with Children
I loved sharing and writing mask poems with my students when I was an elementary teacher and a school librarian. I found having my students write mask poems was an excellent way to encourage them to think and write creatively about subjects that they were learning about in school.
If we were doing a unit of study on space, my students could pretend they were the sun, the moon, a planet, a meteor, a star, a galaxy—and write poems from the perspectives of those “heavenly “ objects. Imagine pretending to be a galaxy spiraling around in the universe…a meteor blazing through Earth’s atmosphere…the sun blasting out solar flares…a star looking like a jewel in the night sky!
Imagine speaking in the voice of an animal you had learned about through doing research on and writing a report about. In your poem, you could slither and hiss as a cobra. You could be a cheetah and run across the grassland chasing prey. You could be a penguin speeding “through the freezing sea like a bullet.”
After taking walks in the woods, observing a tree in or near your yard for several days, and studying about evergreen trees and about the yearly cycle of broadleaf trees—you might even pretend to be a willow tree with a crown of green that “looks like a leafy waterfall”—or a birch tree that feels alone in the forest and whistles “in the night when the wind blows through my leaves”—or a tree beseeching a bluebird to build a nest in its leafy arms and to lay eggs the color of the sky in it.
My students really got into the groove of taking on the “personality” of the subjects they wrote about in their mask poems.
Here are three mask poems written by my second grade students that won prizes in the 2000 Massachusetts Science Poetry Contest:
FIRST PRIZE
If I Were a Tree
by Flynn Grade 2
If I were a tree,
If I were a tree,
I'd work all summer
Making food for me.
I'd drink the rain
From the soft brown earth,
Take sunlight in
Through my leaves of green.
I'd stand outside
And breathe the air.
If I were a tree,
If I were a tree,
I'd work all summer
Making food for me.
SECOND PRIZE
Sun
by Mike Grade 2
I am a flaming
Ball of gases.
My solar flares
Blast into space
Like big fiery hands
Reaching for comets.
I am the sun,
Burning hot,
A golden star
Lighting the darkness.
HONORABLE MENTION
I Am the Sun
by Anne Grade 2
I am the sun,
A fiery sphere.
Flames
Lash out of my body
Like shooting stars.
I am the sun,
A roaring lion
Shaking my mane of fire.
I rule the universe.
I am the sun.
COLLABORATIVE CLASS MASK POEMS
I sometimes visited with other classes in my school to lead poetry-writing sessions. Here are collaborative mask poems that I wrote with two other second grade classes in my school. Mrs. Berg’s class was learning about penguins; Mrs. Baker’s class was doing a butterfly unit.
PENGUIN
A Class Poem by Mrs. Berg’s Class
I am a penguin,
chubby in my black and white
suit,
waddling on the slippery ice,
sliding on my big belly
into the freezing cold sea.
SPLASH!
Here I come, fish.
I’m hungry as can be!
MONARCH
A Group Poem by Mrs. Baker’s Class
I chew on a milkweed leaf
so yummy.
I wiggle around on a green stage.
I hang upside down
like a bat
and shed my striped skin.
Inside my green and gold chrysalis
I grow my bright orange wings.
Someday I will be
a beautiful monarch
and fly around free
in a field of flowers.
Recommended Poetry Books with Mask Poems
It is always wise to immerse children in mask/persona poems written by a variety of poets before asking them to write their own poems. I always found it helpful to write a collaborative group poem before sending students off to write their own individual poems.
Here are some books with mask poems that I used in the classroom and in the library to inspire my students. The following books are all in print.
DIRTY LAUNDRY PILE: POEMS IN DIFFERENT VOICES
Selected by Paul B. Janeczko
Illustrated by Melissa Sweet
HarperCollins, 2001
This terrific anthology includes poems by Karla Kuskin, Bobbi Katz, Tony Johnston, Patricia Hubbell, Lilian Moore, Marilyn Singer, Jane Yolen, Douglas Florian, Alice Schertle, April Halprin Wayland, and Kristine O’Connell George. In these poems, the poets speak in many different voices—including those of a vacuum cleaner, a washing machine, the winter wind, a whale, a cow, a mosquito, a bacterium, a blue crayon, a snowflake, and trees.
DESERT VOICES
Written by Byrd Baylor
Illustrated by Peter Parnall
Macmillan, 1981
In Baylor's book, we hear the voices of desert animals—including those of a jackrabbit, a rattlesnake, a spadefoot toad, a buzzard, and a coyote—speaking to us about themselves and their life in the desert. The free verse mask poems in this book serve as excellent examples for children in early elementary and middle grades.
INSECTLOPEDIA
Written & illustrated by Douglas Florian
Harcourt Brace, 1998
Insectlopedia is my absolute favorite Douglas Florian poetry book! Not all of the poems in this collection are mask poems—but the nine that Florian wrote for Insectlopedia are exceptional examples for kids…and they’re a lot of fun to read to and recite for students. The mask poems in this book include The Dragonfly, The Inchworm, The Black Widow Spider, The Weevils, The Whirligig Beetles, and The Locusts. The other poems in this book are terrific, too.
OLD ELM SPEAKS: TREE POEMS
Written by Kristine O’Connell George
Illustrated by Kate Kiesler
Clarion, 1998
Just five of the poems in Old Elm Speaks are mask poems—but they are fine examples to share with children. In Oak’s Introduction, an oak tree speaks to a child—telling him he’s been watching him grow…and inviting the child to see how high he can climb on him/her now that the tree has also grown and has strong branches. In Miss Willow, a narcissistic tree has been admiring herself in “the still cool waters” when a heron comes along and splashes down on her “glorious reflection.” In the book’s other mask poems: a maple shoot remembers helicoptering through the air the previous fall and how it had come to rest in a patch of dirt that was “sweet and soft”; a neatly clipped city tree speaks of having wild dreams of being a forest when all the cars have gone home for the night; and an old elm tells a young sapling It will take/autumns of patience/before you snag/your/first/moon. This lovely book by an award-winning poet would be a great addition to an elementary classroom library collection.
More Than Mask Poems
WHEN RIDDLES COME RUMBLING: POEMS TO PONDER
Written by Rebecca Kai Dotlich
Illustrated by Karen Dugan
Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, 2001
Many of the poems in this book are not just mask poems--they are riddle rhymes to boot! It would be fun to read these rhythmic, rhyming riddles aloud to children and ask them to guess whose "voice" is speaking in each poem. The voices include those of a snake, a pizza, fireworks, a trampoline, and a roller coaster. The illustrations will help children guess the answers to the riddles.
BUTTERFLY EYES AND OTHER SECRETS OF THE MEADOW
Written by Joyce Sidman
Illustrated by Beth Krommes
Houghton Mifflin, 2006
All of the poems in this book are riddles; many of them are also mask poems. Winner of the 2006 Cybils Award for Poetry, this book contains outstanding examples of mask poems. Some of the "voices" speaking to us in the poems are those of the dew, a grasshopper, a spittlebug, xylem and phloem, a milkweed plant, and a hawk. The illustrations in this book also provide clues for young readers to help them solve the riddles. You can read my review of BUTTERFLY EYES here.
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At Blue Rose Girls, I have a second post about Magnetic Poetry, which includes poems composed online by Mary Lee of A Year of Reading, Pam Coughlan of Mother Reader, Meghan McCarthy of the Blue Rose Girls, and me.
At Political Verses, I’m featuring Poem for the End of the Twentieth Century by J. Patrick Lewis for this first Poetry Friday during National Poetry Month.
Amy Planchak Graves has the Poetry Friday Roundup at ayuddha.net.
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Oh Termites! Great poem about those hungry uninvited guests.
Enjoyed the video. Julia has gotten SO big! What pretty blue eyes :).
Hate the termites but I love the poem! Love the idea of your animal mask collection too!
Oh, my: Julia is growing up so fast. She'll be able to recite your poems back to you pretty soon.
Planks, parquet, clogs--your termites have quite a varied diet!
I love that Tastes so/Tastes so/Tastes so good! What a fun poem - and what a beautiful Julia. Lucky both of you! I missed you at NCTE, Elaine... xo, a.
Love it! Funny how wonderful a poem about something completely icky can be.