Now let's load some serious love all over the Cybils Poetry Award Winner for 2015! Over at her Poetry for Children blog, Sylvia Vardell summarizes the process of nomination and first-round panel selections for this award. These fine folks read widely and chose seven outstanding books as finalists.
I served as one of the 2nd round judges who studied and discussed the merits of these seven finalists in passionate detail, with guidance from Jone MacCulloch. Now, after keeping mum for almost two weeks, Diane Mayr, Rosemary Marotta, Linda Baie, the aforementioned Laura Shovan and I can shout our choice from the tops of our blogs! (Drum roll please....)
The 2015 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers Literary Award
for Poetry goes to...
FLUTTER AND HUM/ALETEO Y ZUMBIDO
by Julie Paschkis
0 Comments on announcing...Cybils Poetry Award Winner 2015! as of 2/14/2016 3:46:00 PM
This collection offers 21 short poems on the ever-popular theme of good eats. They're organized by season and are rhymed and metered verse, every one. Titles like "Only Guacamole!", "How a Poet Orders a Shake," "Voyage of the Great Baked Potato Canoes" and "The Word's Biggest Birthday Cake" give a good sense of the spirit of this collection aimed at readers 4-12. Here are two excerpts.
from "Welcome to Watermelon Lake"
That's right, it's PINK! And what is more,
you're sure to like the pale green shore,
and how you feel so fresh and new—
you’ll love it here, we promise you!
But wait, there’s more! This place is sweet!
We even have a little fleet
of small black boats for summer fun—
enough of them for everyone!
and from “Gingerbread House Makeover”
And picture now a healthy house,
admired from coast to coast,
adorned with corn and carrot sticks
and built of whole wheat toast…
The radish roses near the walk,
the grove of broccoli tree,
the teeny-weeny doorknobs made
of bright green peas…”
Just makes you smile, doesn't it, starting the day with those tasty mouthfuls?! Puts me in mind of some foodily nonsense I experimented with years ago....
The Produce Cinquains Kiwi: alien green inside, alien fuzz outside—fruit that will never look dewy.
| Raisin: shrinking darkly, the grape adds its juices to the cloud of vapor on the ho- rizon. |
Oranges: thick skins heavy with Florida sunshine, so round that they resist being arranged.
| Mango: no matter how you slice it, the flesh around its deceptively large stone gets mangled. |
Wax bean: its name alone is unappetizing— not to mention how it looks fake, lacks green.
| Peaches: all of August’s sweet heat accumulates until the fruit dips within our reaches. |
Carrot: how can something that grows in the dark be as bright as the feathers of a parrot?
| Cabbage: once a month I buy one, thinking coleslaw; three weeks later it goes in the garbage.
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| ~Heidi Mordhorst |
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| all rights reserved |
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The Poetry Friday Roundup is with Keri today at Keri Recommends--go get a bite of poetry produce!
This month I'll be highlighting some of the top-notch poetry published in the last year--so top-notch that it was deemed by the
Cybils Award Round 1 panel to be a finalist for the award. As a Round 2 judge, I'm going to share some excerpts from each book this month. Since it finally got cold here in Maryland this week, I'll begin with...
Winter Bees and Other Poems of the Coldby Joyce Sidman
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| Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014 |
This book, illustrated by Rick Allen using a complicated combination of linoleum block prints hand-colored, "digitally scanned, composed, and layered," contains just 12 poems. Some are free verse and some are rhymed and metered. This collection has received 5 starred reviews and almost a dozen awards, including in 2014, since it was published in November of 2014.
excerpt from "Winter Bees"
We scaled a million blooms
to reap the summer's glow.
Now, in the merciless cold,
we share each morsel of heat,
each honeyed crumb.
We cram to a sizzling ball
to warm our queen, our heart, our home.
excerpt from "Chickadee's Song"
The sun wheels high, the cardinal trills.
We sip the drips of icicles.
The buds are thick, the snow is slack.
Spring has broken winter's back.
How's that for a little taste of the cold?
Please join Tabatha for some more of the muscle and grace of great poetry--she's got the Roundup at
The Opposite of Indifference today.
Learned Hand was born on this day in 1872. In a letter dated 15 May 1951, Judge Learned Hand wrote President Harry S. Truman to declare his intention to retire from “regular active service.” President Truman responded to Hand’s news with a letter praising his service to the country. These letters are excerpted from Reason and Imagination: The Selected Letters of Learned Hand, edited by Constance Jordan.
To Judge Learned Hand
May 23, 1951
The White House, Washington, D.C.
Dear Judge Hand:
Your impending retirement fills me with regret, which I know is shared by the American people. It is hard to accept the fact that after forty-two years of most distinguished service to our Nation, your activities are now to be narrowed. It is always difficult for me to express a sentiment of deep regret; what makes my present task so overwhelming is the compulsion I feel to attempt, on behalf of the American people, to give in words some inkling of the place you have held and will always hold in the life and spirit of our country.
Your profession has long since recognized the magnitude of your contribution to the law. There has never been any question about your preeminent place among American jurists – indeed among the nations of the world. In your writings, in your day-to-day work for almost half a century, you have added purpose and hope to man’s quest for justice through the process of law. As judge and philosopher, you have expressed the spirit of America and the highest in civilization which man has achieved. America and the American people are the richer because of the vigor and fullness of your contribution to our way of life.
We are compensated in part by the fact that you are casting off only a part of the burdens which you have borne for us these many years, and by our knowledge that you will continue actively to influence our life and society for years to come. May you enjoy many happy years of retirement, secure in the knowledge that no man, whatever his walk of life, has ever been more deserving of the admiration and the gratitude of his country, and indeed of the entire free world.
Very sincerely yours, Harry S. Truman
Hand immediately responded to the President’s letter:
To President Harry S. Truman
May 24, 1951
Dear Mr. President:
Your letter about my retirement quite overwhelms me. I dare not believe that it is justified by anything which I have done, yet I cannot but be greatly moved that you should think that it is. The best reward that anyone can expect from official work is the approval of those competent to judge who become acquainted with it; your words of warm approval are much more than I could conceivably have hoped to receive. I can only tell you of my deep gratitude, and assure you that your letter will be a possession for all time for me and for those who come after me.
Respectfully yours, LEARNED HAND
The letters above were excerpted from Reason and Imagination: The Selected Letters of Learned Hand, edited by Constance Jordan, a retired professor of comparative literature and also Hand’s granddaughter. Learned Hand served on the United States District Court and is commonly thought to be the most influential justice never to serve on the Supreme Court. He corresponded with people in different walks of life, some who were among his friends and acquaintances, others who were strangers to him.
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Image credit: (1) Harry S Truman. US National Archives. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Judge Learned Hand circa 1910. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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