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Poetry Friday is becoming quite the event in the children's literature blogging community. Kelly Herold at Big A Little A is credited with generating the excitment for this often neglected area of literature and her blog is also today's host. A visit will take you to dozens of other sites where you will find a variety of perspectives on poetry today. By the way, Kelly is also one of the co-founders of the Cybils Awards which have just finished up for this year. I was thrilled to be a part of the reading panels this year. See the Cybils' widget on this page for an evolving (I assume totally random) array of submitted titles.

And I have to credit Kelly Fineman, a writer and poet who documents her journey at Writing and Ruminating with introducing me to the wonderful world of kids lit bloggers after I met her at a SCBWI meeting in Los Angeles last August. Meeting her led me to find the community of folks blogging for avid readers and supporters of children's literature and thus to the Cybils, but it also gave me the oomph I needed to start blogging myself.

So, my contribution to Poetry Friday is one of my favorites as a young reader - "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, (1832-1898). I still love its rhythm and its invented words that sound so real because they could have been. Such is Carroll's mastery, I never suspected they weren't real until I was older and studied the poem. It still is one of my all-time favorite read-alouds.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought -
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffiling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Poetry Foundation has a good description of Poetry Friday. We're making new friends and sharing poetry. Join in the fun by checking out today's host site - Big A, Little A.

Chicken Spaghetti’s Poetry Friday this week highlights a piggy limerick. I enjoyed the quotation of a limerick interwoven with her line-by-line critique, which seems to be heading towards creating a new form of comic verse… I think Edward Lear would approve! We have been reading and reciting Lear’s limericks on and off over the school holidays, following the visit of a friend who started inventing them at the dinner table. My younger son’s love of playing with words until they are transmuted into something not-quite-completely different is fully satisfied by Lear’s Nonsense Alphabets, which he loves reading aloud with me and then chewing over on his own afterwards:

A was once an Apple-pie,
Pidy
Widy
Tidy
Pidy
Nice insidy
Apple-pie

And so on…

We were also bowled over in a Devonshire pottery (on our way home from Cornwall) when we were regaled with a complete rendition of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky – truly inspiring! By chance, we had been listening to a dramatised recording of Alice’s Adventures through the Looking Glass in the car so the boys were able to join in in parts, thus gaining more kudos than they truly deserved!

Now I really must seek out Sukumar Ray’s collection of nonsense poetry, Abol Tabol, as chosen by Swapna Dutta in a Personal View for PaperTigers. Do any of you have a favorite of his that you would recommend – or any other nonsense poetry for children?

Well it's late on a Friday night, but I'm doing it. Adding my two cents into the Poetry Friday ring. It's Aiden's 2nd birthday party tomorrow and I'm in a whimsical mood as I bake his cake and cook up a storm tonight. Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll seemed just the ticket.

Jabberwocky

by Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe!


The round-up is here.