How to use this Page

Poems by Alan Katz Drawings by Edward Koren Margaret K. McElderry / Simon & Schuster 2008 Okay, once again just to make sure we're all on the same page: do not give your book a title that can be used against you in a review. You would think editors would be the first to understand the rules of making a book review-proof. Of course, it's also a good idea to make sure the content followed the

Forbidden Fruit: Banned, Censored, and Challenged Books from Dante to Harry Potter, is a wonderful new resource that gives readers the background and history on the banning of specific titles. Author Pearce J. Carefoote is a staff archivist at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. In 2002, Carefoote won the OLA (Ontario Library Association) Anniversary Prize, the Rare Books and Manuscripts Award, and the Toronto Area Archivists Group Award.

Research for an exhibition of banned and challenged books in 2005 culminated in this book.

Its Canadian focus makes it a valuable resource for all schools and libraries.

Tomorrow is Jack Prelutsky’s birthday, so I’d like to send him a happy shout out and celebrate his life and work with a brief post.

He was born on September 8, 1940, in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Hunter College in Manhattan and worked as an opera singer, folk singer, truckdriver, photographer, plumber’s assistant, piano mover, cab driver, standup comedian, and more. He is married and lives in Seattle. He enjoys photography, carpentry, and creating games and "found object" sculpture and collages. He collects frog miniatures, art, and children’s poetry books of which he has over 5000.

Prelutsky has garnered many awards in his long career including citations as: New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, School Library Journal Best of the Best Book, International Reading Association/Children's Book Council Children's Choice, Library of Congress Book of the Year, Parents' Choice Award, American Library Association Notable Children's Recording, an Association for Library Services to Children Notable Book and Booklist Editor's Choice, among others. In 2006, he was honored as the first Children’s Poet Laureate by the national Poetry Foundation which included a $25,000 prize. His combined works have sold over a million copies and been translated into many languages.

Jack Prelutsky is a prolific writer, with many collections of poetry to his credit, including enormously popular anthologies he has compiled of other poets’ works, such as The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (Random House 1983), Read-aloud Rhymes for the Very Young (Knopf 1986), The Beauty of the Beast (Knopf 1997), and The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury (Knopf 1999). In addition, there are many collections of his own popular poetry available including books organized around topics such as Tyrannosaurus was a Beast: Dinosaur Poems (Mulberry 1993) and The Dragons are Singing Tonight (HarperTrophy 1998). His holiday poems are also very appealing: It’s Halloween (HarperTrophy 1996), It’s Christmas (HarperTrophy 1995), It’s Thanksgiving (HarperTrophy 1996), and It’s Valentine’s Day (HarperTrophy 1996), also available in one single audio anthology from HarperChildrensAudio (2005). And for younger children, he created a kind of “American Mother Goose” with nursery rhymes that reference cities and places in the United States, rather than European sites such as “London Bridge” or “Banbury Cross” in his collections, Ride a Purple Pelican (Greenwillow 1986) and Beneath a Blue Umbrella (Greenwillow 1990).

Jack Prelutsky became established as a poetic dynamo with the publication of The New Kid on the Block in 1984, his best-selling collection of 100+ poems illustrated by cartoonist James Stevenson with understated comic genius on every page. With poems that are nearly childhood standards now, like “Homework! Oh, Homework!” and “Bleezer’s Ice Cream,” the music of Prelutsky’s verse is irresistible. Since the publication of New Kid, he rivals Shel Silverstein for name recognition in the field of children’s poetry. Equally popular companion books followed, including Something Big Has Been Here (1990), A Pizza the Size of the Sun (1996), and It’s Raining Pigs & Noodles (2000). A fifth installment is slated for publication in 2008: My Dog May Be a Genius.

Many of Prelutsky’s poems lend themselves to choral reading and poem performance in a variety of ways. For example, his poems with repeated lines or refrains provide a natural opportunity for group participation on the refrain. One of my favorite strategies for performing Prelutsky’s poetry is singing. Count the beats in the first line or two of the poem; then count the beats in the first line or two of the song to see if they match. Many of Jack Prelutsky’s poems, in particular, match song tunes, which may not be surprising when one remembers he was a singer and musician before turning to poetry. Try his poem “Allosaurus” (from Tyrannosaurus was a Beast: Dinosaur Poems), a poem describing the ferocious qualities of this dinosaur sung to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” It’s a hilarious juxtaposition of lyrics and tune. Challenge the children to match other of his dinosaur poems to song tunes.

Allosaurus
by Jack Prelutsky

Allosaurus liked to bite,
its teeth were sharp as sabers,
it frequently, with great delight,
made mincemeat of its neighbors.

Allosaurus liked to hunt,
and when it caught its quarry,
it tore it open, back and front,
and never said, “I’m sorry!”

Allosaurus liked to eat,
and using teeth and talons,
it stuffed itself with tons of meat,
and guzzled blood by gallons.

Allosaurus liked to munch,
and kept from growing thinner
by gnawing an enormous lunch,
then rushing off to dinner.

From Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast
[Sung to the tune of “Row, row, row your boat”]

For more about Jack, his life, and his work, check out his new web site and look for Poetry People; A Practical Guide to Children's Poets (Libraries Unlimited, 2007).

P.S. As always, I'm glad to participate in the Friday Poetry Round Up, hosted this week by Semicolon. (Thanks!)

Picture credit: www.nssd112.org

From the Bellybutton of the Moon / Del Ombligo de la Luna
1998

Angels Ride Bikes / Los Angeles Andan en Bicicleta
1999

Iguanas in the Snow / Iguanas en la nieve
2001

by Francisco X. Alarcon
illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez
Children's Press Books

I wanted to discover a new voice, some new poetry. I wanted it to be my discovery. Not necessarily something new, not something I could trumpet to the world as the next big thing, but something out there that hadn't crossed my path. There's a lot out there.

I went looking for a new voice in children's poetry and initially I went to the Poetry Foundation website because they had anointed the first Children's Poet Laureate last fall. Given my goal that might sound like cheating but what I wanted was to know what was already out there. I didn't want to "find" what someone else was pushing. Turns out I needn't have worried, there wasn't really anything there.

I jumped around on the Internet and landed on a California poet named Francesco X. Alarcon. In simple two- and three-line stanzas he was writing about the small moments of barrio life, of growing up in California, of the migrant and Mexican American experience. I couldn't find anything in bookstores and was able to track down three of his four seasonal collections.

Los Libros / Books

pasaportes / oversized
de talla mayor / passports

que nos permiten / that let us
viajar / travel

a dondequiera / anywhere
cuandoquiera / anytime

y no dejar / and keep on
de sonar / dreaming

In Alarcon's poems a family dressed in army surplus cold weather parkas become the iguanas playing in the rarely-seen snow. There is an ode to the man who twirls his mustache and sells popsicles from a cart at the end of the alley on a summer day. In his poems the imported palm trees of Southern California cha-cha-cha during earthquakes. The colorful illustrations that accompany the poems are in the bold colors and flattened surfaces reminiscent of the Mexican mural movement. The poems and their presentation are perfect for emerging readers who are ready for poetry beyond the rhymes, beyond nonsense, who might be looking for their own poetic inspiration.

Para escribir poesia / To Write Poetry

debemos / We must
primero tocar / first touch
oler y soborear / smell and taste
cada palabra / every word

That pretty much is the complete lesson plan for a poetry unit. Not that you'd find an administration that would accept it as one. I didn't expect to uncover a great new voice but I was happy to have been so successful in a single casual outing.

* * * * *

April, as may remember, was National Poetry Month. While many in the kidlit blogosphere were doing many wonderful things with the month I just wasn't feeling it this time around.

I did, however, hold a secret hope that we would be seeing some more high-profile books and event surrounding National Poetry Month. The source of my hope was the naming of Jack Prelutsky as the Children's Poet Laureate back in the fall by the Poetry Foundation. At the time I imagined that Prelutsky would seize the opportunity to give children's poetry a higher profile, something along the lines of what Robert Pinsky did when he raised the national level of discussion about poetry with his Poet Laureate status. I'm not saying Prelutsky would have to hold a regular gig on NPR, or hold down the fort at Slate.com, or create the Favorite Poem Project, but then again, why couldn't he?

I guess I was hoping that when National Poetry Month rolled around we'd be hearing more from old Jack. Perhaps I just always happened to be out of earshot, perhaps he was out there discovering and promoting new children's poets, making a case for better rhymes or even for an examination of serious poetry for children. I'm not talking about having to track the man down on the Poetry Foundation website for a couple of puff entries but something a little more in our faces.

Oh, wait, he had two of his own book released during National Poetry Month, Good Sports and Me I Am, and it looks like his various publishers went back and dusted off all his older titles. And just this week another new Prelutsky book hit the shelves, In Aunt Giraffe's Green Garden, only this one came out with a Hollywood style name-above-the-title cover that proudly proclaimed "Jack Prelutsky, Children's Poet Laureate".

Huh.

Don't get me wrong, Jack Prelutsky is a fine children's poet and has dozens of very popular books to prove it. The recognition isn't undeserved, though it is unnecessary. I guess I assumed that the title and the position was meant to be something more than a marketing tag and a lifetime achievement laurel.

One needs to be enchanted before being disenchanted, so I guess I'll have to settle for disappointed.