Friday, May 06, 2011

Poetry potpourri (LBH Awards blog is UP!)

I'd like to plug a new blog I've created with the help of my graduate students this spring. It's a resource to promote the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award and is full of Readers Guides and Digital Trailers created by my students for nearly all the award winning and honor books. You'll find it here: LeeBennettHopkinsAward.blogspot

I'm also honored to be interviewed on Aaron Mead's blog, Children's Books and Reviews dedicated to "Helping adults find great children's books." Aaron is currently a Ph.D. student in philosophy at UCLA and he and his wife Angela (along with Amy, a librarian and other contributors) have a lot of interesting content there, including a critical awareness of the tendency to "commercialize" children's literature. It's always a treat to connect with one another across the blog-a-verse, isn't it?

And just for fun-- I discovered that the Dallas public transit system where I live is featuring Poetry in Motion with poems posted on trains around the city! I had seen this in New York, but didn't realize it had come to my own "neck of the woods." Yay!

Finally, did you hear that President Obama is having a poetry reading next week? Awesome! I hope someone there will also be sharing some poetry for children...

P.S. Thanks to Jane Singleton Paul for sharing this info:
On May 11, the President and Mrs Obama will host "An Evening of Poetry," a celebration of American poetry. Included guests are Elizabeth Alexander, Billy Collins, Rita Dove… Here's the "children" part: Mrs. Obama will host a daytime poetry workshop for hundreds of students from California to New York who will have the chance to work with some of the evening's performers…
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8 comments:

  1. Aaron Mead9:15 AM

    Thanks again, Sylvia, for the interview! Keep up the great work!

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  2. Jane Singleton Paul3:55 PM

    The work you do for children and poetry is awesome.
    Here's what I know about the White House event:
    On May 11, the President and Mrs Obama will host "An Evening of Poetry," a celebration of American poetry. Included guests are Elizabeth Alexander, Billy Collins, Rita Dove… Here's the "children" part: Mrs. Obama will host a daytime poetry workshop for hundreds of students from California to New York who will have the chance to work with some of the evening's performers…
    That's all I know for the moment. It'll be in the local DC news, so I"ll be on the lookout. Let's make sure it's in the blogs!

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  3. Sylvia Vardell9:28 PM

    Thanks, Aaron-- you, too!

    Thanks for your kind compliment, Jane, and for sharing the additional info-- very cool! I hope it's OK if I add that to the blog posting. Thanks again for stopping by!

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  4. Sal's Fiction Addiction10:44 AM

    What a great interview with Aaron Mead! Thanks always for the encouragment and delight you share about poetry for children. I look to your blog for all things new about poetry and for so much more. I am never disappointed...and I loved Poetry Tag Time.

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  5. Sylvia Vardell10:13 PM

    Thanks, Sal. I appreciate all your sweet compliments! It's always nice to connect with a fellow poetry-lover!

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  6. Charles Waters2:15 PM

    Sylvia,
    Thank you for all that you do.

    Luv,

    C

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  7. Sylvia Vardell11:10 PM

    Thank you, Charles! Lovely to connect with you once again. Hope all is well in FL!
    Sylvia

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  8. Elli Woollard5:17 PM

    The idea of 'Poetry in Motion' sounds very much like the 'Poems on the Underground' that we have on tube train (metro) system here in London, England. It's a fantastic way of getting adults and children into poetry. I can well remember reading Siegfried Sassoon (the British WW1 poet) for the first time on a train journey, and being very moved by his writing.

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