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I feel like I've posted so much about my own writing, my own poetry, me, me, me lately. I appreciate all the enthusiastic, supportive response from y'all, and today, I thought I'd give you a break and post about other people, for a change! 

I wanted to share three of my favorite poets and their websites: Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Joyce Sidman, and Tracie Vaughn Zimmer.

Rebecca Kai Dotlich has been one of my favorite poets for years. Her poetry knocks my socks off! I love the way she uses concrete nouns and verbs to create a world so vivid you feel like the poem is real, instead of your life.

Here's just one of the many, many poems of hers I love.

Backyard Bubbles

One bubble
shimmies
from the wand
to waltz around
the backyard lawn.
One fragile globe
of soapy skin--
a glimering
of breath within
a perfect pearl,
I blow again!
One more bubble 
squeezes through,
one blushing bead
of water-blue;
and then 
another
rinsed in pink
(shivering
with pastel ink)
dances on 
a summer sigh,
shimmering 
with shades of sky,
s-l-o-w-l-y slides
right out of sight;
backyard bubbles
taking flight.

---Rebecca Kai Dotlich, all rights reserved

Isn't that lovely? "Shivering with pastel ink..." Love that! Anyway, Rebecca's gorgeous website is full of treats to discover. Read about her and Lee Bennett Hopkins going to Radio City Music Hall, find out What's New with her, and check out her Tips for Young Poets. And, of course, explore her books.

Like Rebecca herself, her site is full of joy and enthusiasm. It's a pleasure to spend time with.

Joyce Sidman writes poetry I wish I had written. When I read This Is Just to Say, I actually had smiles and tears on my face at the same time. Her ability to weave content into poetry also amazes me. Song of the Water Boatman is another of my favorite collections.

Joyce works extensively in the schools, and her site reflects that. She has a Writer Pep Talk, Poem Starters, and much more. She also posts poems by kids, which are fun to read.

Here's just one poem from the wonderful This Is Just to Say:

to my brother, Lamar

Secret Message

Where would you hide a secret message?
Under a pillow? In a pocket?
Between two slices of bread?
Where would you hide a message
that wants to be found?

Maybe it shouldn't be found.
Maybe writing it
    is most important.
What happens after
   doesn't matter.

Well, big brother,
here's my secret message:
I'm sorry I'm such a "weird kid."
I'm sorry I embarrass you.

I am hiding it here, under the seat in your car.
I wonder if you will
ever find it.

by DaRon

---by Joyce Sidman

I won't put DaRon's reply poem here. You'll have to get the book and read it for yourself!


Tracie Vaughn Zimmer has a website every poet should visit! Besides learning all about Tracie and her wonderful books, you can visit The Poetry House, featuring interviews with many poets, poetry quotations, etc. It's a treasure chest full of poetic gems.

Another part of Tracie's site that I enjoy is the Teacher Guides section. These guides for poetry books as well as picture books, novels, etc., are filled with activities for teachers to use to extend literature in their classroom. I find them fascinating to look at. I don't write poetry with a teaching guide in mind, but I do find myself saying, "Hmmm...teachers could do this project with this poem--fun!"

And, of course, you can read all about Tracie's lovely book, Reaching for Sun, which just won the Schneider Family Award--yea! Click here and you can also read a Q&A Tracie did with me when I was part of Wordy Girls, as well as my review post of this wonderful novel in verse.

So, if you're looking for a little inspiration, or you want to get tips from some master poets, check out these sites. Have fun!





 

Last month, I posted about children's poetry collections and the techniques and unifying themes that poets use to hold collections together. This month, I continue that thought with a look at six more collections. It was really interesting to reread some favorite picture book collections and think about how the poems go together, what makes them work as a single book, one that will sell to an editor and then to kids and grown-ups. Here's the beginning of the article that's live on my site now.



In the Spin of Things: Poetry of Motion, by Rebecca Kai Dotlich – This lively collection of 23 poems is unified by its topic and its poetic voice.

Every poem describes an object that moves, swings, spins, twirls, shakes, and more. The subjects range from windshield wipers to classroom globes to waterfalls. But the focus of these diverse objects is the movement each one makes. So even though the collection includes items large and small, manmade and natural, noisy and quiet, the poems feel like a whole.

And the style of poetry is also very cohesive. Dotlich is known and loved for her perfect rhymes and exact meters. She makes rhyming, bouncing, chanting, poems look incredibly easily. But Dotlich’s poems here are distinctly different from several of her other collections, like Lemonade Sun and Sweet Dreams of the Wild. The poems here are full of slant rhyme and rhythm.

Even when she uses perfect rhyme, she arranges the lines so that the rhyme is not immediately obvious. The emphasis lies with the verbs—always a strong point of Dotlich’s, but particularly so here. A metered rhyming poem of the kind that Dotlich is so well-known for would be out of place here. If there were 20 traditionally metered poems and only 3 of these slightly more sophisticated free verse poems, then the free verse poems would feel out of place. It’s not a matter of one style of poetry being better. The point is that in a collection, the poetry has to feel like a whole.

Wind Chimes

Clanging
sea secrets
to the wind,
tin ballerinas
on a tangle
of string
sing
their bittersweet
songs;
sweet voices
of chattering ghosts.

Click here to read the entire article at my site and take a peek at 5 other terrific collections.

On Wednesday, I posted The Poetry of Rebecca Kai Dotlich in which I discuss Rebecca's poetry and review three of her poetry collections.

Elaine: Can you tell us what inspired you to become a writer of children’s poetry?

Rebecca: Inspiration is some kind of mystery, isn’t it? We speculate, look back, put pieces of the puzzle together, then say, ah-ha, that was it, coupled with this and strengthened by that. Honestly, I only began to write for children after I had them. Immediately upon cradling that first child, I knew it—when I sang the songs my mother sang to me (Mares Eat Oats, How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?, Que Sera, Sera, Mr. Sandman, and Hush Little Baby) while rocking a fevered baby during long, quiet spring nights, and later, playing records for my toddlers, and listening to rhyming Sesame Street songs (Somebody Come and Play), then reading magical Nursery rhymes—I knew I wanted to write poetry for children. I had always had a love and a natural instinct for rhythm and rhyme, but never translated that into just children’s writing. I had written rhymes (never considering them poems) on a toy typewriter when I was maybe 8 or 9 or so, actual poems on a manual typewriter my grandfather gave me in high school and then in college, but about lots of dying and love. Oh, and love. And sometimes love. But when I started reading and singing to my children about moons and muffins, snowflakes and stars, I knew I had found the kind of writing I not only loved, but needed.


Elaine: Did you read or have much poetry read to you when you were a child?

Rebecca: No, I never read poetry as a young child. I do remember hearing, or somehow knowing Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Swing, etc. But I’m not sure exactly where or how. We certainly didn’t have books of poetry in our house, and I never had a teacher in elementary school that introduced or talked about poetry. But I did love Nursery Rhymes, and we did have lots of those around our house, both in book form and records. So they were my first introduction to poetry. Also, even though my parents never read poetry to me, my father sometimes made up silly rhymes at bedtime, and I loved memorizing jump rope rhymes, and traditional quick rhymes like “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.”

And my brother was always playing songs on his little record player, and most of these rhymed: Take Me Out to the Ballgame and Yankee Doodle Dandy.

“Yankee Doodle went to town riding on a pony, He stuck a feather in his hat, And called it Macaroni.”

I couldn’t wait until I got to the Macaroni part. I loved saying that word.

I remember singing the words to Que Sera, Sera, over and over and over, being touched by the sentiment of our futures being myserious and unknown: When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother what will I be. Will I be pretty, will I be rich, and here's what she said to me -- que sera sera, what ever will be, will be, the future’s not ours to see, que sera sera.

Just threw this in: My grandfather wrote lines of poetry here and there, sometimes in the margins of his bible, or on the back of a photograph. My father wrote beautiful letters and had a fondness for quotations. My brother kept a journal in high school and as a young man in the army. My brother and dad were both avid readers.

A poem I wrote for an older audience is “Whispers to the Wall,” and is in Paul Janeczko’s Kick in the Head, again in his newest Hey, You!, and will appear in America at War, selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins.


Elaine: You collaborated with J. Patrick Lewis on the book Castles: Old Stone Poems that was published last year. Can you tell us how the two of you connected to write that poetry collection?

Rebecca: Pat and I are very good friends, and email (multiple times) daily. We share poems, sometimes asking for advice, and sometimes just for a quick look with another critical eye. So it seemed natural when we decided to write a book together, but we needed a theme. We threw out ideas, then I told him I was working on a few castle poems, and he jumped on that idea. He loved the mystery of legend and castle lore as much as I did. We researched and made lists of castles we wanted to include, chose and divided up which ones we each would write, and set out to include fact, fantasy, legend and mystery. We traded poems back and forth, trading ideas and revision suggestions as we went along. It didn't take us long, although he is a much quicker writer than I am. He probably wanted to pull his hair out a time or two. You give Pat Lewis a collection of poems to write and he's finished while you sneeze.

Last Friday, I wrote about the poetry of summer. In the post, I included a short review of Rebecca Kai Dotlich’s Lemonade Sun and Other Summer Poems—as well as two poems from her book.
Today, I’m going to write more about the poetry books of Rebecca Kai Dotlich. For Poetry Friday, I’ll post my interview with her.

I was introduced to Rebecca’s poetry with her first book Sweet Dreams of the Wild: Poems for Bedtime. This is a perfect book to read to young children at night. The poetry is soft and lilting and dreamy. Here is how the book opens:

As the moon unwinds its silver thread
And sleepy children climb in bed,
Sweet dreams are stirring in the air
As wild ones sleep—
Do you know where?

SWEET DREAMS OF THE WILD: POEMS FOR BEDTIME
Illustrated by Katharine Dodge
Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, 1996

Different animals—including a hummingbird, a red robin, a black spider, a caterpillar, a spotted cow, and a sea otter—are all asked where they sleep. The animals then answer the query in lyrical fashion. Here are excerpts from two of the book’s poems:

Red robin,
red robin,
where do you sleep?

I rest in a nest
built of twigs and string
with my head tucked under
a folded wing…


Black spider,
black spider,
where do you sleep?

I sleep in a web
of knitted threads,
woven of silk
in a flower bed.
On a thin, gauzy sheet
I sway in the air,
from a lilac bush
to the garden chair.

The book ends with a young child being asked where she sleeps:

Do you sleep in a bed
fluffed cozy and warm
with a white woolen quilt
and a bear in your arms?…

I thought Sweet Dreams of the Wild: Poems for Bedtime was reminiscent of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?. I asked Rebecca if that book was the inspiration for her first book. Here is her response:

No. But I can see why you might think that. No, it was actually a poem by Margaret Wise Brown that was written long before Martin wrote Brown Bear. It was called The Little Black Bug and was published in 1937.

From The Little Black Bug by Margaret Wise Brown: "Little black bug/little black bug/where have you been?"

Click here for a peek inside at Sweet Dreams of the Wild: Poems for Bedtime.

Rebecca also wrote a collection of poems entitled When Riddles Come Rumbling: Poems to Ponder. In the poems that are contained in this collection, Rebecca provides clues for readers—and the illustrator Karen Dugan provides further clues—to help them solve the riddles. And if readers still can’t deduce the answers, all they have to do is to flip back to the verso of the title page where the answers are provided.

WHEN RIDDLES COME RUMMBLING: POEMS TO PONDER
Illustrated by Karen Dugan
Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, 2001

The poems in When Riddles Come Rumbling could best be described as riddle rhymes. They are short and rhythmic…and many are written in the voices of the animals or objects that are the subjects of the poems. Here is one of the mask poems from the book:

I curl,
I coil,
I sidewalk-slide,
I slip,
I slink,
I garden-glide,
I speak in reptile-tongue,
(a hissssss)
I try to bite
You hope
I misssssssssss.

I guess it’s easy enough to figure that one out!

I particularly like the language Rebecca uses in some of the riddles to describe the animals and objects: A telescope is “A small magic funnel/a star-/spangled tunnel.” What does a hula hoop do? “That ring of wonder/spins around below the waist” A gumball machine is “a round glass world” and an octopus is a “boneless bandit/of the sea.” I also like her use of words describing the action of animals and objects in her riddles:

Snake: curl, coil, side-walk-slide, slip, slink, garden-glide
Roller coaster: grunt, grumble, twirl, whirl
Yoyo: rock, swirl, snap
Fireworks: boom, pop, decorate
Marbles: spinning, rolling, circling, colliding
Mechanical crane: swing, shoot, swivel
Telescope: searching, exploring, seeking, scanning, parading

When I was teaching in elementary school, I was always looking for poems like these with precise use of words, strong verbs, and creative language—poems that would serve as fine examples for my students’ writing…literature that would enrich their vocabularies.

Classroom Connection: Using the poems in When Riddles Come Rumbling: Poems to Ponder as models, have students write their own poetic riddles. The riddles don’t have to rhyme—but should include clues to help readers figure out the answers. It might be fun for the children to write their riddles in the form of mask poems and speak in the voice of the animals or objects that are the subjects of their riddles. The children could then read their riddles to their classmates and have them “ponder” the answers.

Click here for a peek inside at When Riddles Come Rumbling: Poems to Ponder.

Let’s take a look at another of Rebecca’s poetry collections entitled In the Spin of Things: Poetry of Motion.

IN THE SPIN OF THINGS: POETRY OF MOTION
Illustrated by Karen Dugan
Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, 2003

This book contains poems about objects…in motion! These things include windshield wipers, a pencil sharpener, scissors, a rubber band, a classroom globe, a washing machine, a lawn mower, wind chimes, puppets, a roller coaster, a kitchen broom, and a carousel. Here again, Rebecca is adept with her use of language: Bite-sized bits of cereal “bob before/our breakfast nose…paddle in spoons.” A pepper shaker is a “peppered palace” “packed with a million/midnight spots.” Autumn leaves “gather in gutters.” A pencil sharpener “gnaws/and nibbles/whittles and whirs.” Ice cubes in drinks are “mixing, scrambling/changing places/chilly cubes/frozen faces.” The cubes swirl and romp and swim and melt. A lawn mower “Clips tips/spits bits/of grass/Scribbles/paths/forges trails/snails around/a maze/of trees.” A helicopter sways and swerves and hovers and its “paddle blades whirl/in the spin of things.” A roller coaster is described as “turtling up” as it climbs on the rails and as “hugging/the armored/humpback track.” Here are two poems from the book. The first poem rhymes; the second does not:


SCISSORS
by Rebecca Kai Dotlich

X slides open,
squeezes shut—
snip, snip, snip,
carve,
cut.
Silver mouth
yawning wide;
clip, clip, clip,
split,
divide.
Slash, gnash,
Dice up, dice.
Criss-cross-Criss;
slice, slice.
Paper cutters,
steel shears—
X swings out, then
disappears.


WIND CHIMES
by Rebecca Kai Dotlich

Clanging
sea secrets
to the wind,
tin ballerinas
on a tangle
of string
sing
their bittersweet
songs;
sweet voices
of chattering ghosts.


Classroom Connection: Discuss the objects in motion in Rebecca’s In the Spin of Things. Point out the ways she describes how the objects move or how they are moved by another force. Ask them to look around the classroom to see if they can name things that move or can be made to move--for example, windows, doors, chalk or dry erase markers, an eraser, computer keys, a pencil, a paint brush. Take the children outside and ask them to do the same thing. Students might mention that trees move in the breeze, swings swing back and forth on the playground, balls bounce up and down and can swirl around the rim of a basketball hoop.

Make a list of all the objects that the students name. Then talk about the kinds of movement specific to two or three of the objects. Select one of the objects and write a collaborative class poem about that object that is “in the spin of things.” All this brainstorming, discussion, and collaboration should be enough to get the children revved and ready to write their own “poetry of motion.”

Click here for a peek inside In the Spin of Things: Poetry of Motion.

I would like to express my thanks to Rebecca Kai Dotlich for granting me permission to include the full text of her poems posted here.

School will soon be out. The summer solstice is just around the corner. Hotter days will arrive along with the sounds of children playing outdoors on weekday mornings. I can still remember vividly many of the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and activities of summer from my childhood:

Watching fireworks exploding into color in the night sky and hearing their loud crackles and booms on the Fourth of July

Eating slices of succulent watermelon, juice dribbling down my chin, and spitting out the slick black seeds onto the sidewalk

Listening to the sound of cicadas in the heat of a summer day and the song of crickets at night

Slurping up raspberry lime rickeys and chocolate ice cream sodas

Running through the sprinkler, my bare feet squishing through wet grass

Picking feather-topped carrots, glossy-skinned peppers, scallions, and ripe tomatoes from my grandparents’ garden

The smell of hamburgers and hot dogs being cooked on an outdoor grill

The banging of my kitchen screen door as I ran outside to play

The tart, refreshing taste of my mother’s homemade lemonade

Feeling the cool wet sand beneath my feet at the seashore

Playing hide-and-go-seek with my cousins and friends on a balmy summer evening


With these images in mind, I thought this would be a good time to write poems about summer. Wouldn’t this also be the perfect time for children to write summertime poems? I think it would be a wonderful and enjoyable final writing exercise for the school year.

Well, here are two fine collections of poems to get kids thinking “poetically” about the warmest season of the year.

SUMMERSAULTS
Written & illustrated by Douglas Florian
Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 2002

Most kids love the poetry of Douglas Florian. I know my students did! SUMMERSAULTS contains twenty-eight lighthearted verses about such topics as fireflies, dandelions, swinging on a swing, bees, jumping rope, grazing cows, and baseball. The poems are rhythmic and rhyming and lots of fun to read aloud.

SUMMERSAULTS includes several excellent examples of list poems: What I Love about Summer, What I Hate about Summer, Greenager, Some Summers, No Fly Zone, Names of Clouds, Lost and Found, The Sea, and Dog Day. These poems could be used to inspire your students to write their own list poems about the different sights, sounds, smells, tastes, weather, and activities of summer. A teacher could brainstorm with her kids about all the things that come to mind when they think of summertime and school vacation. The teacher could write her kids’ contributions down on chart paper, guide the class in writing a class list poem about summer, and then ask them to write their own individual poems.


Here are excerpts from some of Douglas Florian’s list poems in SUMMERSAULTS.

From What I Love about Summer

Morning glories
Campfire stories
Picking cherries
And blueberries…

Skipping stones
Ice cream cones
Double plays
And barefoot days.


From What I Hate about Summer

Skinned knees
Ninety degrees…

Humid nights
Mosquito bites
Clothes that stick—
I hate that summer goes too quick.


From Lost and Found

Along the shore
I found six shells:
Two gray,
One white,
Three caramel…

Five feathers from
A seabird’s wings.
I wonder: Who
Has lost these things?


As a teacher, I believed it was always best to read the poetry of more than one poet to my students before asking them to write their own poems on a particular topic. Another collection of poems that would be great to share with kids prior to having them write their own summer poems is Rebecca Kai Dotlich’s LEMONADE SUN.

LEMONADE SUN AND OTHER SUMMER POEMS
Written by Rebecca Kai Dotlich
Illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist
Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, 1998

Dotlich’s writing style is different from that of Florian’s. While most of her poems celebrating summer are rhythmic and rhyming, they contain more imagery and figurative language. Let me provide you with some examples from her poems. She refers to jacks as tin bouquets/small bundles of piggyback stars. In Sunflowers, she compares the flowers to Golden guards/saluting/sky/garden kings/with chocolate eyes. In Dragonfly, she calls the insect a sky-ballerina/this glimmering jewel…with wings that you/could whisper through. In Backyard Bubbles, one of the loveliest poems in the collection, she compares a bubble to One fragile globe/of soapy skin/a glimmering/of breath within/a perfect pearl. Later in the poem she writes about another bubble that dances on a summer sigh/shimmering with shades of sky.

Dotlich includes other poems about lemonade, a lemonade stand, bumblebees, playing marbles, dandelions, pinwheels, jumping rope, going barefoot, jellyfish, a firefly, and fireworks. The poetry in this book definitely takes me back to the summer days of my childhood