Baseball in poetry

On April 27, 1947, "Babe Ruth Day" at Yankee Stadium was held to honor the ailing baseball star. “Babe was given the greatest ovation in the history of the national pastime…” On this same day in 1983, Texas legend Nolan Ryan broke Walter Johnson’s 56-year old record with his 3,509th career strikeout. And on this day in 1996, Barry Bonds became only the fourth major leaguer to hit 300 homers and swipe 300 bases. Clearly, it’s time to celebrate baseball and poetry! Here are some of my favorite sports and baseball poetry books for children.

Adoff, Arnold. 1986. Sports Pages. HarperCollins.
Burleigh, Robert. 2003. Home Run. Voyager.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 1993. Extra Innings: Baseball Poems. Harcourt.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 1996. Opening Days: Sports Poems. Harcourt.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 1999. Sports! Sports! Sports! HarperCollins.
Janeczko, Paul. 1998. That Sweet Diamond. Atheneum.
Knudson, R. Roxanne, and May Swensen, comp. 1988. American Sports Poems. Orchard.
Koertge, Ron. 2006. Shakespeare Bats Cleanup. Candlewick.
Morrison, Lillian, comp. 1992. At the Crack of the Bat: Baseball Poems. Hyperion.
Prelutsky, Jack. 2007. Good Sports; Rhymes About Running, Jumping, Throwing, and More. Knopf.
Smith, Charles R., Jr. 2004. Diamond Life: Baseball Sights, Sounds, and Swings. Orchard.

And don’t forget the classic baseball poem, "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Thayer and available in picture book form illustrated by Patricia Polacco (Putnam, 1997) or by C. F. Payne (Simon & Schuster, 2003) and the Caldecott honor winning Casey At the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888, illustrated in “scrapbook” format by Christopher Bing (Handprint, 2000). Also fun to share-- the popular seventh inning song, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" by Jack Norworth also available in picture book form illustrated by Maryann Kovalski (Scholastic, 1993) or Alec Gillman (Aladdin, 1999).

Here’s one baseball poem, just for fun:

Play Ball!
by Lillian M. Fisher

It was my turn to bat
And I hit the ball
So hard it sailed
Right over the wall.
The crowd went wild.
I started to run.
How happy I’d be
If my team won.
First base, second,
third—I’m home free!
Hurrah for my team!
Hurrah for me!

From Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 1999. Sports! Sports! Sports! HarperCollins.

Picture credit: www.klc.org

Celebrating folk poetry and Alvin Schwartz

Author and folklore collector Alvin Schwartz was born on this date in 1927, in Brooklyn, New York (and died March 14, 1992). Although he may best be known for the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" series, which are among the most frequently challenged books (or book series) according to ALA, he also compiled over two dozen collections of children’s folklore of many types in very kid-friendly formats. Most of these are completely hilarious, such as:

A twister of twists, a tangler of tongues (1972)
Tomfoolery: Trickery and foolery with words (1973)
Cross your fingers, spit in your hat: Superstitions and other beliefs (1974)
There is a carrot in my ear: and other noodle tales (1986)
Busy buzzing bumblebees: and other tongue twisters (1992)
I saw you in the bathroom and other folk rhymes (1999)

Many children—and adults—don’t realize that the silly songs, rollicking rhymes, and nonsense games we learn in early childhood are indeed a form of literature. Folk poetry is the poetry you don’t even realize is poetry. Rhymes on the playground like "Cinderella dressed in yellow" have no known author and yet are familiar to many generations of children. These rhyming verses can also be included in our poetry collections. Books of riddles, chants, tongue twisters, jumprope rhymes, finger plays, handclapping games, autograph sayings and more often contain poetry and verse. What’s more, children are often intrigued to find in print the verses they have heard and known only orally and only in the domain outside of school—at home and at play.

Alvin Schwartz’s collection of uniquely American verse, And the Green Grass Grew All Around (1992) is one of my all-time favorites and has so many wonderful examples that children will enjoy. You may be surprised, for example, to discover that there are second and third verses to poems you knew only one verse of as a child. One of my favorites is a parody of the song, "I've been working on the railroad"-- "I've been working on my homework/ all the live long day/ I've been working on my homework/ just to pass..." (It ends abruptly on purpose!)

For additional examples of children's "folk poetry," look for Iona and Peter Opie’s I saw Esau: The Schoolchild’s Pocketbook (1992) or Virginia Tashjian’s Juba This and Juba That (1969). Authors and collaborators Joanna Cole and Stephanie Calmenson have also created several collections of folk poetry worth knowing about such as Anna Banana: 101 Jump-Rope Rhymes (1989). And Judy Sierra has gathered a gem with Schoolyard Rhymes: Kids' Own Rhymes for Rope Skipping, Hand Clapping, Ball Bouncing, and Just Plain Fun (2005). And for a scholarly analysis of this "genre" look for Poetry's Playground: The Culture of Contemporary American Children's Poetry (Landscapes of Childhood) by Joseph Thomas.

This medium helps validate children’s experiences, link oral and written modes of expression, and invite active, even physical participation. Children can collect other examples on audio or videotape and explore neighborhood, cultural, and linguistic variations. They can translate their English favorites into other languages represented in their community. Older children may enjoy exploring the historical roots of childhood folklore or writing down new and unfamiliar examples.

Picture credit: barkowitz.wordpress.com

Tree Poetry for Earth Day

Today is officially Earth Day and many people also celebrate Arbor Day sometime during the month of April. And although there is an abundance of nature poetry for children available, I think it would be appropriate to focus on TREES, in particular. Living on the prairie in Texas, I’m a big fan of trees, since we don’t have many. I was a tree climber as a kid and a tree planter as an adult. And there are many poems about trees to share with young people beginning with Joyce Kilmer’s classic, “Trees” which begins “I think that I shall never see/ A poem lovely as a tree.”

In fact, once I started looking, I found that many of my favorite poems were about trees, from David McCord’s “Every Time I Climb a Tree” to “Arbol de Limon/ Lemon Tree” by Jennifer Clement and translated by Consuelo de Aerenlund, presented in both English and Spanish (in Naomi Nye's anthology). Here’s a poem by Karla Kuskin that is also a fine example of “concrete” or “shape” poetry in which the words of the poem also suggest the shape of the poem’s subject.

If you stood with your feet in the earth
Up to your ankles in grass
And your arms had leaves running over them
And every once in awhile one of your leafy fingers
Was nudged by a bird flying past,
If the skin that covers you from top to tip
Wasn’t skin at all, but bark
And you never moved your feet from their place
In the earth
But stood rooted in one spot come
Rain
Wind
Snow
Sleet
Thaw
Spring
Summer
Winter
Fall
Blight
Bug
Day
Dark
Then you would be me:
A tree.

Kuskin, Karla. 1972. Any Me I Want to Be. Harper & Row.

For more “tree” poems, look for these anthologies:
Brenner, Barbara. 1994. The Earth is Painted Green: A Garden of Poems about Our Planet. Scholastic.
Bruchac. Joseph. 1995. The Earth Under Sky Bear's Feet: Native American Poems of the Land. Philomel Books.
Fisher, Aileen. 2003. Sing of the Earth and Sky: Poems about Our Planet and the Wonders Beyond. Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press.
George, Kristine O’Connell. 1998. Old Elm Speaks: Tree Poems. Clarion Books.
Greenfield, Eloise. 1988. Under the Sunday Tree. Harper & Row.
Gunning, Monica. 1998. Under the Breadfruit Tree: Island Poems. Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press.
Jones, Hettie, comp. 1971. The Tree Stands Shining: Poetry of the North American Indian. Dial Books.
Kuskin, Karla. 1980. Dogs and Dragons, Trees and Dreams: A Collection of Poems. HarperCollins.
Kuskin, Karla. 1975. Near the Window Tree. Harper.
Levy, Constance. 1994. A Tree Place and Other Poems. McElderry.
Lindbergh, Reeve. 1990. Johnny Appleseed. Joy Street Books.
McCord, David. 1999. Every Time I Climb a Tree. Little Brown.
Nye, Naomi Shihab, comp. 1995. The Tree is Older than You Are: A Bilingual Gathering of Poems and Stories from Mexico with Paintings by Mexican Artists. Simon & Schuster.
Singer, Marilyn. 2002. Footprints on the Roof: Poems About the Earth. Knopf.
Yolen, Jane. 2000. Color Me a Rhyme: Nature Poems for Young People. Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press.

And of course this begs for a poet-tree display! Create a paper tree trunk and branches and encourage children to choose their favorite poems to display on large green paper leaves hanging from the branches.

Picture credit: www.phong.com

Dictionaries, ABCs, and poetry

On this day in 1828, Noah Webster published his first American Dictionary of the English Language. According to the Merriam-Webster web site (who knew?), Noah Webster “learned 26 languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit, in order to research the origins of his own country's tongue. This book, published in 1828, embodied a new standard of lexicography; it was a dictionary with 70,000 entries that was felt by many to have surpassed Samuel Johnson's 1755 British masterpiece not only in scope but in authority as well…. He was the first to document distinctively American vocabulary such as skunk, hickory, and chowder.”

I thought it might be fun to look around and see if I could find any poetry collections that were organized alphabetically ala the dictionary. Several readily came to mind, but when I dug further, I was surprised at just how many I found. Here’s my list so far:

Ada, Alma Flor. 1997. Gathering the Sun: An Alphabet in Spanish and English. Lothrop, Lee, & Shepard.
Bryan, Ashley. 1997. Ashley Bryan's ABC of African American Poetry. Atheneum.
Harley, Avis. 2000. Fly with Poetry; An ABC of Poetry. Wordsong/Boyds Mills.
Harley, Avis. 2001. Leap into Poetry: More ABCs of Poetry. Wordsong/Boyds Mills .
Hopkins, Lee Bennett. 2003. Alphathoughts. Boyds Mills Press.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett. 1994. April Bubbles Chocolate. Simon & Schuster.
Janeczko. Paul, comp. 1994. Poetry from A to Z: A Guide for Young Writers. Bradbury.
Merriam, Eve. 1995. Halloween ABC. Aladdin.
Schnur, Steven. 1997. Autumn: An Alphabet Acrostic. Clarion. (See also: Winter, Spring and Summer all by Steven Schnur)
Sierra, Judy. 2004. There's a Zoo in Room 22. Voyager.
Wilbur, Richard. 2001. The Disappearing Alphabet. Voyager.
Young, Judy. 2006. R Is for Rhyme: A Poetry Alphabet. Sleeping Bear Press.

If you work with children, the alphabet comes up a lot-- obviously. With younger children, it’s a subject for mastery. But even as children are growing up, they refer to it constantly as they alphabetize, research, and organize information. So, using the alphabet as a framework for creative activities is a natural. One of my favorite, sure-fire ways to approach class projects as a teacher was to produce group alphabet books, with each individual student taking one letter and creating one page for that letter. Why not use this framework for creating and organizing poetry with kids?

Picture credit: blogs.ipswitch.com

A Poem for Dream Day

Somewhere I read that today is officially National Dream Day! Here is one of my favorite “dream” poems (in addition to all the wonderful “dream” poems by Langston Hughes, another favorite). It’s by the Japanese poet Michio Mado from an older collection, The Animals, illustrated with delicate papercut images by award-winning artist Mitsumasa Anno and translated into English by the Empress Michiko of Japan, herself a poet.

Sleep
by Michio Mado

At night,
When quietly
The two tiny windows of my body
Lower their blinds,

The two tiny windows
Of all creatures of all kinds,
Living in the sky,
The sea, and on land,
Quietly
Lower their blinds, too.

So as not to cause
A single dream

To be mixed
With any other.

From: Mado, Michio. 1992. The Animals: Selected Poems. New York: Margaret K. McElderry.

Isn’t that strange and wonderful to imagine? All the world’s creatures dreaming different dreams…

Each poem in the book appears in both Japanese and English, making it an excellent example of bilingual poetry. Since both the English and the Japanese versions of the poem are presented, it is possible to experiment with reading the lines as if they were written for two voices. Find a guest speaker able to read Japanese. The guest can read the poem in Japanese, followed by a second volunteer reading in English. Then BOTH readers read their versions simultaneously, in both Japanese and English. Just be sure to encourage the readers to pause at the end of each line and start the next line together. It may take a bit of practice, but it can be quite a powerful listening and language experience. Children who speak a language other than English may want to try translating one of their favorite English poems and orchestrating a read aloud in both their languages.

Picture credit: nuovo.com