By: Sergio Ruzzier,
on 1/21/2013
By: Sergio Ruzzier,
on 7/18/2012
Some liquid refreshment from Karla Kuskin's Moon, Have You Met My Mother?
By: Sergio Ruzzier,
on 11/16/2011
By: Betsy Bird,
on 6/22/2010
Things that I have difficulty understanding: The rules of soccer. How to work an f-stop on a camera (or what it even means). The French language. The fact that actors Patton Oswalt and Tunde Adebimpe appear to be in a movie that is filming right now and is going by the title . . . The Seven Chinese Brothers. That brings to mind the Margaret Mahy version, not to mention the controversial Claire Huchet Bishop one (though that story had only five brothers in it). Actually, Ms. Bishop used to work in my children’s room (though when folks ask we usually mention the fact that Marcia Brown worked here first). The internet is curiously mum about this Patton/Adebimpe project so . . . we’ll just assume that it’s another picture book to screen adaptation. It gives my existence just the right dose of insanity I crave on a daily basis.
By: Molly Blaisdell,
on 11/30/2009
This is it, folks. The last day of the Golden Coffee Cup! Oh, what a journey. I was so glad to be on it with you. Please post your stories of success or trial by midnight tonight. No clue what a Golden Coffee Cup is? Click here.
Today's last cup-of-java high five comes from the spirit of the incomprable Karla Kuskin. She left us too soon this year.
---------------------------CREDIT: Jennifer New
I was not a friend of Karla, but I did meet her and have a beloved signed copy of her MOON, HAVE YOU MET MY MOTHER.
I took a couple of months once and each day read and reread one of her poems and then wrote my poem inspired by hers. It was a freeing experience. To this day, if I'm stuck, I go to her book, and I read. And I'm not stuck anymore. The boxes of words I get locked in, fall away. I love how free and flowing she was with language. I think we could all learn a lesson from her.
As a speaker, Karla was more than generous with advice and a willingness to share with others the inside of her journey in hopes they too might find their way. Here is a fab article about Karla. My advice to you today is let those who inspire you, move you too. Don't waste that flash of genius that sparks the fire inside you. Let the fire whip up and turn into a wild fire.
And this is it, folks. I hope the Golden Coffee Cup was good to the last drop. Send in your email address, post your story, and I will forward your official Golden Coffee Cup Award. I'll be back tomorrow with the official winners of the real live coffee. :) Snap! Snap! Snap!
P.S. My normal weekly musings on Seize the day resumes .
Remember: If you reach your goal from Nov 23 to Nov 30, and post on blog, you will receive your Golden Coffee Cup picture. There is no verification process, I believe you. Send in your email address to [email protected] and your Golden Coffee Cup picture will be emailed to you. Display it proudly as wallpaper, post it on your blog, print it out and tack it on your bulletin board for year-long motivation. Write a great post and you might win the real coffee!
Let's take Karla advice and do the following with all our works. OK? OK.
Instead of building a fence of formality around poetry, I want to emphasize its accessibility, the sound, rhythm, humor, the inherent simplicity. Poetry can be as natural and effective a form of self-expression as singing or shouting. Karla Kuskin
By: Laura Purdie Salas,
on 8/24/2009
 | Sad news over the weekend. Prolific and wonderful poet/author/illustrator Karla Kuskin has died at the age of 77. She wrote an enomous variety of poems, many of them clever and joyful. I like some of her bittersweet ones the best, though. One child put her thin arms around the wind and they went off together. Later the wind came back alone. --Karla Kuskin, all rights reserved You can read the New York Times obituary here. And Sylvia Vardell has a lovely post up at Poetry for Children, too. |
By: Julie Fortenberry,
on 8/22/2009
By: Aline Pereira,
on 4/22/2008
Marjorie and I weren’t quite part of the willing and dealing that is normally associated with the Bologna Book Fair (unlike Blue Rose Girls‘ Alvina Ling, Little, Brown publisher extraordinaire. See her photo of the fair’s agent center, with all the rows of numbered tables). We weren’t there to to buy or sell rights, but to take it all in: we renewed old contacts and made new ones, we lined up interviews for the website and, most of all, we spread the word on PaperTigers. We spent the bulk of our time on three main halls, where most of the publishers of multicultural books were – and that was by no means a small feat – but we did have time for a few blood orange juice-breaks, and to attend authors’ presentations, gatherings at the Illustrators’ Café and an award ceremony or two. All very much worthwhile.
One of these inspiring, ‘off the beaten book aisles’ moments was the Bologna Ragazzi Award ceremony, which took place at the end of our first day – a day which had begun with the poetry panel Marjorie recently wrote about. The fair this year had a special section dedicated to poetry and a poetry category “to encourage the publication of poetry for children throughout the word” was especially added to its prestigious set of awards. Judged by an international jury, the winner of the poetry prize was the Polish publisher Wytwórnia, for “Tuwim: Poems for Children,” a celebration of the Polish poet Julian Tuwin’s children’s poems (his work has been compared to Shell Silverstein’s) by seven talented graphic artists. I can’t read Polish, but I could pick up on Tuwin’s virtuose and the poems’ vitality just by looking at the expressive typographic lines and the exuberant graphs and whimsical doodles that accompanied them.
A gorgeous poetry catalog including profiles of renowned poets from around the world was created to accompany an exhibition that will travel to major Italian cities. The exhibit’s first stop was at the Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio in downtown Bologna, where colorful leaflets with poems in different languages were distributed to those attending the opening (and what better invitation to poetry lovers than to sail between all those languages!…). Among the American poems distributed was Karla Kuskin’s “Words, and Words, and Words:”
What separates each one of us
from all the beasts and bugs and birds?
Well they have feathers, fur and wings
but we have words,
and words,
and words.
And since today, April 22, we celebrate “Earth Day,” I’ll end this post with another poem by Kuskin (the poem from Bologna introduced me - at last! - to her work, and the library books I borrowed upon returning home made me fall in love with it):
Dear Earth,
I miss your green and blue.
I miss my room and bear.
It’s dull and lonely here on this old star.
I miss your night, Dear Earth,
the moon above,
the cool dark grass below.
I miss each always-different, ever-changing day.
You know the way you are, Dear Earth.
Well, stay that way.
She’s pretty witty! (
:-)
One for me would suffice!