TLA Poetry Round Up 2011

Since my students and I posted a connected "tag" game of poetry book reviews for the entire month of April, I wasn't able to share more about the wonderful "Poetry Round Up" we held at the annual conference of the Texas Library Association in Austin in April. Let me rectify that now please!

This fast-paced poetry event features a variety of contemporary poets reading from their works for children and young adults. It's modeled after the ALSC “Poetry Blast” and celebrates the pleasures of the spoken word for young people. I'm proud to say this was our SEVENTH annual Poetry Round Up and we've now hosted 43 poets in Texas for this popular session over the least 7 years! I'm so pleased about that and hope to add more names to that roster next year at the TLA conference in Houston, too.








This year's event included the following wonderful poets:

• Calef Brown (courtesy of Houghton Mifflin)
• Julia Durango (courtesy of Charlesbridge)
• Margarita Engle (courtesy of Macmillan)
• Helen Frost (courtesy of Macmillan)
• Kristine O’Connell George (courtesy of Clarion)
• Marilyn Singer (courtesy of Random House; Penguin)
• Robert Paul Weston (courtesy of Penguin)
• Lisa Wheeler (courtesy of Simon & Schuster)

Once again, we had a tremendous variety of writing styles, poetic forms, and presentation methods. It was a lively, meaningful mix and the audience was completely absorbed. This time, I was able to recruit some help (thanks, Marianne) in filming each poet, so I'll post each of those short clips separately with a bit more info about each poet in subsequent postings. Meanwhile, here's a select bibliography I compiled of works by these poets, just FYI.

SELECTED BOOKS BY 2011 ROUND UP POETS

Brown, Calef. 1998. Polkabats and Octopus Slacks. Houghton Mifflin.
Brown, Calef. 2000. Dutch Sneakers and Flea Keepers. Houghton Mifflin.
Brown, Calef. 2006. Flamingos on the Roof. Houghton Mifflin.
Brown, Calef. 2008. Soup For Breakfast. Houghton Mifflin.
Brown, Calef. 2010. Hallowilloween: Nefarious Silliness. Houghton Mifflin.
Durango, Julia. 2005. Dream Hop. Simon & Schuster.
Durango, Julia. 2006. Cha Cha Chimps. Simon & Schuster.
Durango, Julia. 2007. Pest Fest. Simon & Schuster.
Durango, Julie. 2010. Go-Go Gorillas. Simon & Schuster.
Engle, Margaret. 2006. The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano. Holt.
Engle, Margarita. 2008. The Surrender Tree. Holt.
Engle, Margarita. 2009. Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba. Holt.
Engle, Margarita. 2010. The Firefly Letters; A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba. Henry Holt.
Engle, Margarita. 2011. Hurricane Dancers. Henry Holt.
Frost, Helen. 2003. Keesha's House. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Frost, Helen. 2004. Spinning through the Universe. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Frost, Helen. 2006. The Braid. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Frost, Helen. 2008. Diamond Willow. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Frost, Helen. 2009. Crossing Stones. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Frost, Helen. 2011. Hidden. Macmillan/Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
George, Kristine O’Connell. 1998. Old Elm Speaks: Tree Poems. Clarion.
George, Kristine O’Connell. 1999. Little Dog Poems. Clarion.
George, Kristine O’Connell. 2001. Toasting Marshmallows. Clarion.
George, Kristine O’Connell. 2002. Swimming Upstream: Middle School Poems. Clarion.
George, Kristine O’Connell. 2004. Hummingbird Nest. Harcourt.
George, Kristine O’Connell. 2005. Fold Me a Poem. Harcourt Brace.
George, Kristine O’Connell. 2011. Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poems. Clarion.
Pinkwater, Daniel. Comp. 2011. His Shoes Were Far Too Tight by Edward Lear. Ill. by Calef Brown. Chronicle.
Singer, Marilyn. 2008. First Food Fight This Fall. Sterling.
Singer, Marilyn. 2008. Shoe Bop! Dutton.
Singer, Marilyn. 2010. Mirror, Mirror. Dutton.
Singer, Marilyn. 2011. A Full Moon is Rising. Lee & Low.
Singer, Marilyn. 2011. A Stick Is an Excellent Thing. Ill. by LeUyen Pham. Clarion.
Singer, Marilyn. 2011. Twosomes: Love Poems from the Animal Kingdom. Knopf.
Weston, Robert Paul. 2008. Zorgamazoo. Razorbill/Penguin.
Wheeler, Lisa. 2002. Sixteen Cows. Harcourt.
Wheeler, Lisa. 2003. One Dark Night. Harcourt.
Wheeler, Lisa. 2004. Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum. Little, Brown.
Wheeler, Lisa. 2007. Jazz Baby. Harcourt.
Wheeler, Lisa. 2008. Boogie Knights. Atheneum.

Image credit: SV; http://lowerfairfieldwriters.blogspot.com/2010/12/childrens-picture-book-festival.html
THANKS TO MARIANNE FOR TAKING PHOTOS!

Posting (not poem) by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2011. All rights reserved.

Reviewing the TLA Poetry Round Up

I’m still riding the high of my Poetry Round Up at the Texas Library Association conference this week! Five fabulous poets, John Frank, Juanita Havill, Alan Katz, Linda Sue Park, and Adam Rex, worked their magic on an audience of nearly 200 participants. It was fantastic! John Frank read from How to Catch a Fish and his new collection, Keepers, in his deep and steady voice. Juanita shared excerpts from her new novel in verse, Grow, that brought several audience members to tears. Alan Katz had us in stitches laughing over poems from his new book, Oops, and his upcoming follow up, Uh-Oh. What fun to feature Linda Sue Park as a POET as she read her sijo poems from Tap Dancing on the Roof, plus a brand new sijo on explaining baseball to an alien. And Adam Rex wrapped it up for us with his deadpan delivery accompanied by slides from his hysterical collection, Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, as well as the upcoming sequel, Frankenstein Bakes a Cake. (Thank you ALL for coming and sharing!) [Unfortunately, poet Tracie Vaughn Zimmer was not able to come due to an illness, but we hope she is well soon and will join us for the Round Up next year!]

What fun! What variety! The different voices, styles, and approaches helped the audience see the tremendous range of poetry available for young people today. PLUS, the experience of HEARING poetry was moving and exhilarating. People stopped me throughout the rest of the conference to tell me how much they had enjoyed the session. One woman said, and I’m paraphrasing, “I loved just soaking up the words of the poets, sitting back and taking it all in. But I also realized that I was getting ideas about how to share the poems with kids, how to connect the poems with various activities, and get kids involved.” EXACTLY! We spend so much time at conferences attending informational sessions, learning new strategies, networking, etc. But so little time just reveling in literature, hearing the lyrical language of literature, remembering what motivates us all to work as librarians and teachers—sharing our love of literature with kids and hoping they’ll love it too. And in my experience, nothing captures that quite so well as experiencing the literature firsthand through reading and listening—especially to literature read by the creator. It’s primal!

I’m proud to say we’ve brought 26 poets to Texas over the last four years including: John Frank, Juanita Havill, Alan Katz, Linda Sue Park, Adam Rex, Jaime Adoff, Tony Crunk, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Charise Mericle Harper, Heidi Zingerline Mordhorst, Eileen Spinelli, Marilyn Singer, Calef Brown, Felipe Herrera, Kathi Appelt, Nikki Grimes, Stephanie Hemphill, Carole Boston Weatherford, Walter Dean Myers, Joyce Sidman, Quincy Troupe, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Janet Wong, Kurt Cyrus, Pat Mora, Susan Pearson. What an embarrassment of riches! Each voice has been a delight. I encourage you all to seek out poets and poetry and share them OUT LOUD with kids you care about. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s like a rock concert experience, a night at the theater, or meeting the President (any president!).

Some of the most interesting literature for children today can be found in poetry-- from humorous rhymes to verse novels. How do we create a welcoming environment for poetry? Poet and teacher Georgia Heard put it this way, “Kids need to become friends with poetry…. They need to know that poems can comfort them, make them laugh, help them remember, nurture them to know and understand themselves more completely” (1999, p.20). This session helped participants become familiar with some of the best poets writing for young people today with a panel of acclaimed poets sharing favorites from their own work through reading aloud or performance. Modeled after the “Poetry Blast” session first sponsored by ALSC at the 2004 ALA convention, this session reminds us all of the pleasures to be found in the spoken word. Look for it again next year at TLA in Houston—and in Anaheim at the ALSC Poetry Blast on Monday, June 30. See you there!

Picture credit: www.rccsd.org

Sneak Peek: John Frank

Next week at the annual conference of the Texas Library Association, I’ll be hosting our (fourth annual) Poetry Round Up, modeled after the ALSC Poetry Blast held at the ALA convention every June. It’s an opportunity to enjoy some of the best poets writing for young people today sharing favorites from their own work through reading aloud or performance. One of the panelists is up-and-comer, John Frank. He is an accomplished poet as well as an author of humorous stories. His 2001 picture book The Tomb of the Boy King was proclaimed "a mesmerizing epic poem" by Publishers Weekly. School Library Journal called his poetry collection, A Chill in the Air: Nature Poems for Fall and Winter “an evocative collection” with “fresh images.” His recent title, How to Catch a Fish received a *Starred Review* from Booklist, calling it full of “resonating poetic vignettes that spawn a glinting, striking catch.” Texas readers will also love the wonderful read aloud picture book, The Toughest Cowboy How the Wild West Was Tamed.

Here’s a poem from his latest collection, Keepers, just out this spring, illustrated with photographs by noted photographer, Ken Robbins. It’s a spare and lovely collection with the parallel poetry and photography organized along several themes, focusing on treasures one finds at the beach, in the attic, in the mountains and deserts, at the flea market, and beneath the ground—urging us to look closely, enjoy the hunt, and appreciate the rare find.



Pull out a dime. Invite kids to study it: the images, the words, the date. (The one pictured is actually from 100 years ago: 1908.) Think aloud together about how many hands this coin has touched; what kinds of purchases it has made.

Old Coin
by John Frank

I found a dime
a century old
while digging deep below.

Imagine what
it might have bought
a hundred years ago.

From Keepers (Roaring Brook Press, 2008, p. 59)

Just for fun, pair this anthology with Alice Schertle's poetry collection also entitled Keepers (HarperCollins, 1996) illustrated in beautiful watercolors by Ted Rand. Invite children to share their favorite treasures and find poems to match (or write their own).


Picture credit: www.niderost.com; amazon.com