No poetry this week--just more baby pictures from a proud and baby crazy new grandmother. I've been spending a lot of time visiting with my daughter, son-in-law, and my nearly three-weeks-old granddaughter
. I've been having a grand time!
HAVING THE FIRST WORDS
Guess what FedEx left at my house yesterday? Need a clue? Just want me to tell you the answer? Okay…TEAM MOON: HOW 400,000 PEOPLE LANDED APOLLO 11 ON THE MOON—and it was inscribed by the author, Catherine Thimmesh. It was my prize for submitting the funniest entry in Book Buds “Famous First Words” contest. Anne Boles Levy asked contestants to come up with the words we thought an astronaut would exclaim when stepping foot on Mars for the very first time.
I suppose you’d like to read my snarky entry:
The sky is pink.
The rocks are red.
There ain’t no birdies
Overhead.
It’s bare. It’s bleak.
Don’t see no plants…
Or other green
Inhabitants.
It’s desolate.
The air is scant.
Except for me—
No life’s extant.
It’s dusty, dry.
I need a beer.
Houston,
Get me outta here!
I actually entered two poems—but Anne liked this one better than my parody of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
A LOQUACIOUS ASTRONAUT WAXES POETIC AFTER STEPPING FOOT ON MARS
Whose planet’s this? I know I know.
His home’s on Mount Olympus so
He will not see me stopping here
To go exploring to and fro.
The polar ice cap’s very near.
I spy three skaters. Drat! I fear
Some other life forms came before.
I’m NOT the first Mars pioneer.
I see a Super Star Trek Store…
And garish neon signs galore!
There’s garbage everywhere I tread.
Don’t want to be here anymore.
This trip’s a bust to “Planet Red.”
Yo, Earth, give me the go-ahead
To visit Jupiter instead,
To visit Jupiter instead.
Now…back to the MOON! Figuratively, that is, not literally. In addition to being a poetry geek, I am also an astronomy buff. TEAM MOON is my kind of book. Even a young child who can’t yet read could get lost in this book just looking at the amazing photographs. (I know a young grandnephew who is going to get a copy of TEAM MOON for his birthday in two weeks. He’s an astronomy buff like me.)
I wrote Anne yesterday to tell her I had received my prize. I also said I just might have to write another poem for the occasion. But…I have sooooo many old moldering poems in my files that I was able to pull this one out to post today. The following poem is now dedicated to Anne and Catherine Thimmesh.
MARY HAD A LITTLE MOON
(Another old moldering poem by Elaine Magliaro)
Mary had a little moon.
It shone just like a star.
And everywhere that Mary went
She brought it in a jar.
She sneaked it into class one day,
Which was against the rule—
But teacher smiled because it was
The brightest thing in school.
When I’m writing, I do my best not to repeat myself. I try to vary the way I begin my sentences. I try not to use the same words over and over again. There are times, however, when repetition can be used to great effect in poetry.
I wrote the following poem It’s Raining last April. I was inspired to write it after experiencing a long period of rainy days. It just kept on raining and raining and raining…and sometimes pouring. It seemed as if the rain would never stop. In my poem, I tried to capture the voice of a child who feels his/her world has been inundated with rain.
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It’s Raining
It’s raining…
Raining all around.
It’s raining puddles
On the ground.
It’s raining
On my booted feet.
It’s raining
Rivers in the street.
It’s raining cats.
It’s raining dogs.
It’s raining ponds
For polliwogs.
It’s raining
Drop by drop by drop…
A billion trillion—
It won’t stop!
It’s raining buckets
From the sky.
Don’t think the earth
Will EVER dry.
In the past month, we’ve had a LOT of storms where I live. Most of the storms deposited a significant amount of snow. It seemed we’d no sooner shovel ourselves out from one storm when we’d hear that another one was headed our way. The snow is really deep around here! It’s as high as an elephant’s eye—maybe even a giraffe’s eye!
Because of all the storms, I’ve been housebound more than usual this winter. I started taking pictures from inside and outside of my house. The pictures and the “serial snowstorms” inspired me to write poetry.
Here are two snow poems in which I used a lot of repetition. As in my rain poem, I tried to capture a child’s voice in these snow poems.
It Snowed and Snowed
It snowed all day.
It snowed all night.
It snowed and snowed.
Two feet of white
covered everything in sight.
Our yard,
our deck,
our walk,
the road
don’t look the same
because it snowed…
and snowed
and snowed
and snowed
and snowed.
I dress up in my winter wear
And step out in the frosty air.
I look around and what I see
is a marshmallow wor
I’ve written dozens of “things to do” poems. One of them, Things to Do If You Are a Pencil, was published in the anthology Falling Down the Page: A Book of List Poems, which was edited by Georgia Heard.
Things to Do If You are a PencilBe sharp.
Wear a slick yellow suit
and a pink top hat.
Tap your toes on the tabletop,
listen for the right rhythm,
then dance a poem
across the page.
I enjoy writing "things to do" poems….thinking about what life might be like for inanimate objects, animals, elements of nature, etc. The poems can be thought of as poems of address--apostrophe--in which I speak to pencils and moles and the rain and the sun...or just as someone daydreaming about and personifying the subjects of the poems.
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I’ve selected one of my personal favorite “things to do” poems for posting today.
Things to Do If You Are a Mole
By Elaine Magliaro
Make your hom
In Meghan’s “no resolutions for me” post, she lists her best “thinking” spots and asks readers to tell about theirs. Her query led me off on a tangent—not about places and times when writing ideas bubble up to the surface of my consciousness, but about my actual process when I go about writing my blogs.
So here it is:
The Id, the Ego, Those Infernal Impulses, and the Elements of Style
I love children’s poetry. It would follow that I also love children’s poetry books. Because I love children’s poetry books—I buy children’s poetry books. I have lost count of how many I own—but you can believe me when I tell you that I have hundreds of them. The same holds true for picture books—and all other kinds of children’s books. I don’t have to run down to the public library or visit a school library to find children’s poetry books or picture books or any other kind of books to review. One might think that having so many books at hand would make writing for a children’s literature blog easy for me. Think again!
There are two things I find difficult to do each week: decide what to write a blog about for Friday—and then to write a blog about it. At the beginning of my brainstorming process, I always end up asking myself lots of “Should I?” questions.
Should I review a poetry book that is hot-off-the-press?
Should I write about a wonderful book that was published years ago that has not found the readership it deserves?
Should I write an in-depth review of just one poetry book?
Should I review two or three books?
Should I review picture books written in verse—or picture books with lyrical texts?
Should I go searching for another old moldering poem that’s stuffed inside one of dozens of folders?
Should I write something serious and thought-provoking?
Should I don my wise guy persona and write a funny post?
Should I write something personal about the way poetry has affected my life?
Should I write about a controversial subject in the hopes of getting a discussion going?
Should I? Should I? Should I?
Next, the figurative gears in my gray matter start turning. There are times when I get so many ideas they all buzz around in my brain like bees flitting from flower to flower in search of nectar in summertime. And then I think: “This is a good idea for a blog. No, wait…this is a better idea.” And as the ideas spark electrical impulses in my frontal lobes and my left
Poetry for the Seasons
I am a former elementary school teacher. I spent thirty-one years in the classroom. I also served as librarian at my school for three years. I know from my experience that one of the most popular subjects for poetry to share with elementary age children is poetry about the seasons. Teachers always asked to borrow seasonal poems about colored leaves, pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns, migrating birds, snow and winter weather, hibernating animals, sledding and ice skating, kite flying, flowers blooming, April showers, and the return of spring from the poetry file I kept in my second grade classroom—and later in my library. I was happy to oblige. A true enthusiast, I was always proselytizing with poetry.
So today, for Poetry Friday, I thought I would review three books of seasonal poetry. These are not hot-off-the-press books. Two were published in 2003 and one was published in 2002.
SEASONS: A BOOK OF POEMS
Written by Charlotte Zolotow
Illustrated by Erik Blegvad
Published by HarperCollins (2002)
SEASONS is An I Can Read Book. Its poetry is perfect for beginning readers. The vocabulary in this book will not intimidate children who are just learning to read independently. The poems are short—many are no more than six or eight lines long. The book contains poems that rhyme as well as poems that do not rhyme. While most of the poems speak about the weather and other signs of the four seasons—snow, falling leaves, summer winds, spring rain—there are poems that touch on other subjects as well—shadows, a pet cat, anger, watching an airplane flying across the nighttime sky. Erik Blegvad’s charming watercolor and ink illustrations—some of which conform to the shape of particular poems—are a perfect complement to Zolotow’s poetry for early readers.
Don’t let the small size of this book fool you. It is quite a substantial collection containing forty poems. SEASONS is a book of poetry that is perfect for use in kindergarten through the second grade.
Here are two examples of the simplicity you will find in the poems Zolotow wrote for this book:
Spring Song
The winter snow melts away
and the air is soft this sunny day
What does this gentle wind sing?
I know! I know!
Here comes Spring!
Spider Web
In the early summer morning
after the rain
small spider
your gray lace web
sparkles with diamonds
of
dew.
I can attest to the fact that many of the struggling readers I taught in second grade found the “I Can Read” poetry collections and anthologies published by HarperCollins
What great bookshelve and storage!
And that's so interesting about J. picking DD...do you think she picks up on your fondness for Grace and her books, or does she just like it, for mysterious reasons?
I love the fact that she does!
libby
Libby,
I ordered the “Dumpling Days” from Barnes and Noble and had it delivered to my new home. I wasn’t there when my daughter opened the package. For some reason, “Dumpling Days” appealed to Julia. I can’t say why. Yesterday, Julia and I spent quite a lot of time looking through Grace’s illustrations in the book. Julia appears to be fascinated by Grace’s illustrations in the book.
I think it's so interesting to see which books kids gravitate towards, especially when they for a very different age level! Tilly likes things way above her often... I have read The High Hills about 100 times this week and she sits through the whole thing.