Poetry reissued

My fall semester is starting today, so I have been busy with getting it ready to roll. Still, I don’t want to neglect my poetry postings, so here’s a short note about new "old" poetry books to watch for. Good news! There are a few older poetry books that are being reissued as paperbacks this year. I’m always excited to see that happen because it means they’ll be available a little while longer (since books go out of print so very fast, especially poetry books) and it means that more KIDS may buy them since paperbacks are even more affordable and portable for young readers. So… here are a few notices I’ve encountered, I hope readers will comment on other poetry titles they know are coming out in paperback.

Marilyn Singer—Monster Museum (Disney-Hyperion)

X.J. and Dorothy Kennedy (compilers)—Talking Like the Rain (Little, Brown)

Wouldn’t it be great to see some of Karla Kuskin’s work reissued? I’d vote for Near the Window Tree… or how about some Myra Cohn Livingston gems?

I’m sure you’ve also seen the notice about the new special edition of Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic coming out from HarperCollins. Here’s a newsy nugget from Publisher’s Weekly Children’s Bookshelf, “First published in 1981, Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic was the first children’s book to reach the New York Times bestseller list, where it appeared a total of 182 weeks…. The reissue will include 12 previously unpublished poems and 10 new drawings by the author, who died in 1999. To help promote this new edition, due with a 250,000-copy first printing, the publisher will add new features to the Shel Silverstein Web site and will launch additional online initiatives…. including creating a free iPhone app… and distributing animated videos of Silverstein poems on YouTube and Facebook…. A Light in the Attic continues to be one of HarperCollins’s top-selling children’s books and has sold more than five million copies in North America.”

With Silverstein’s birthday coming up on Sept. 15, it’s a good moment to revisit his kid-friendly, irreverent work—not that he needs any help from me in reaching his audience! Still, here’s one of my favorite poems from A Light in the Attic. I have used it countless times in poetry performances with kids and it’s always a hit. Ask for volunteers for individual lines (while you read the N = narrator parts). There are 20 “Whatif” lines, so a whole class can participate. The poem has a humorous tone, despite the list of worries, but it takes on deeper shades of meaning when children voice the lines. Try it—it may be a good icebreaker for the beginning of the school year when children do have many worries about how the year will go.

WHATIF

by Shel Silverstein

N Last night, while I lay thinking here,

N Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear

N And pranced and partied all night long

N And sang their same old Whatif song:

1 Whatif I’m dumb in school?

2 Whatif they’ve closed the swimming pool?

3 Whatif I get beat up?

4 Whatif there’s poison in my cup?

5 Whatif I start to cry?

6 Whatif I get sick and die?

7 Whatif I flunk that test?

8 Whatif green hair grows on my chest?

9 Whatif nobody likes me?

10 Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?

11 Whatif I don’t grow taller?

12 Whatif my head starts getting smaller?

13 Whatif the fish won’t bite?

14 Whatif the wind tears up my kite?

15 Whatif they start a war?

16 Whatif my parents get divorced?

17 Whatif the bus is late?

18 Whatif my teeth don’t grow in straight?

19 Whatif I tear my pants?

20 Whatif I never learn to dance?

N Everything seems swell, and then

N The nighttime Whatifs strike again!

Afterward, put out a shoe box inviting kids to contribute their own anonymous “whatif” worry lines and then combine them into a new “Whatif” poem to read aloud. It may be reassuring for kids to see that their worries may be shared by others.

Posting (not poem) by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2009. All rights reserved.

Image credit: harpercollins.com;guardian.co.uk

Livingston, I presume

I love book sales, particularly library book sales, and last week I hit a gold mine at the annual Plano (TX) Public Library used book sale. Of course, I’m always digging for poetry, but I rarely run across any volumes that I do not already have. But this time… bingo!... I found nearly 30 fabulous out-of-print titles. This is a bittersweet moment, because I’m sad that they’re no longer on the library shelves and I wonder how often (or whether they’ve been) checked out and shared. But I’m tickled to give these orphans a home and will pore over them to enjoy poems that are new to me, even if the books are old.

In particular, I bought several collections written and/or edited by the Grande Dame of poetry for children, Myra Cohn Livingston, including:

No Way of Knowing; Dallas Poems (1980)
--can you guess why I love this collection and was so excited to get my own copy? Myra lived in my city for 12 years (1952-1964), and the poetry here is a tribute to a local woman and the African American community here

Poems of Christmas (1984)
I Like You, If You Like Me; Poems of Friendship (1987)
--although Myra published plenty of her own poetry, she was also a gifted anthologist who assembled beautiful collections with amazing range, like these two

Worlds I Know (1985)
--a child’s point of view on spending time with family, especially grandparents

Higgledy-Piggledy (1986)
--Peter Sis illustrates every page with tiny sketches of the perfect boy, Higgledy-Piggledy, lampooned by a contemptuous peer

Sea Songs (1986)
--if I remember correctly, these “song” collections (also Earth Songs, Sky Songs, Space Songs) were some of the first anthologies to appear in picture book form with double-page spread art (expressive paintings by Leonard Everett Fisher). Very visual, with only one poem on each double-page. [UPDATE: I am wrong about that. I have since learned that there were indeed illustrated picture book poem collections in the 1970's-- such as Do Bears Have Mothers, Too? by Aileen Fisher and illustrated by none other than Eric Carle (1973).

There Was a Place (1988)
--such poignant poems from the child’s point of view about living with divorced parents or in “broken homes” and coping with separation

If I had to pick only ONE of these to reissue, I think I’d go with this one. The short, rhyming poems are so true, so direct, and sadly timeless. Kids worry so much when their families hit a rough spot—sometimes we forget how much they observe and feel. Here’s the first poem from the book, just as a sample:

Lost Dog
by Myra Cohn Livingston

When I came home
and you weren’t there
I wondered,
worried—tell me where

you went
and why you
left
alone.

I’ve called and called.

Why are you gone?
Why did you leave?
Where did you roam?

When will you sniff your long way home?

from: Livingston, Myra Cohn. 1988. There Was a Place and Other Poems. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, p.1

Why are these wonderful books all out of print? Why is nearly impossible to find nearly any of Myra’s books in print? It’s just crazy! So many of today’s poets learned at her feet. And so much of her poetry (and her collections) feels so timeless.

Her birthday is coming up soon (August 17), and although she is no longer with us, please dig around for her work on the library shelves and in anthologies. (Check out my Aug. 17 posting in 2007 for a more thorough tribute to Myra.) By the way, the Children's Literature Council of Southern California presents a Myra Cohn Livingston award for outstanding poetry each year. Lovely legacy!

It's not too late to check out the Poetry Friday gathering at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Posting (not poem) by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2009. All rights reserved.

Image credit: tularepubliclibrary.wordpress.com

Happy birthday, Constance Levy

May is a terrific month for poet birthdays:
2 Bobbi Katz
5 J. Patrick Lewis
6 Kristine O’Connell George; José-Luis Orozco
7 Michael Rosen
8 Constance Levy
12 Edward Lear
17 Eloise Greenfield
25 Joyce Carol Thomas

We can celebrate their work all month long! And today, in particular, I’d love to highlight the lyrical and often subtle work of Contance Levy. I’ll share a bit of info about her excerpted from my book, Poetry People. Levy is a former teacher and a frequent speaker at schools and educational conferences. She has won many honors including Bank Street College’s Children’s Book of the Year, Boston Globe Horn Book Honor Award, American Booksellers Pick of the List, several National Council of Teachers of English Notable Book in Language Arts citations, New York Library’s Select 100 Titles for Children’s Books and the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for the best poetry book of the year for Splash! Poems of our Watery World.

Many of Levy’s poems use “nature” as a theme and depict everything from butterflies to weeds with a sense of wonder and playfulness. Her poetry collections include:

I’m Going to Pet a Worm Today and Other Poems (McElderry 1991)
A Tree Place and Other Poems (McElderry 1994)
When Whales Exhale and Other Poems (McElderry 1996)
A Crack in the Clouds And Other Poems (McElderry 1998)
Splash!: Poems of Our Watery World (Orchard 2002)

So many of Levy’s poems link beautifully with picture books of fiction and nonfiction. Their directness and effective use of first person or question/answer format invite engagement and interaction. For example, her collection, A Crack in the Clouds, includes a gamut of “cloud” poems that convey the awe and adventure experienced by Lindbergh in the first transatlantic flight in Flight: The Journey of Charles Lindbergh by Robert Burleigh (Philomel 1991). Gather other factual books about flight and airplanes (such as Seymour Simon’s The Paper Airplane Book, Puffin 1976) and invite the children to create displays of clouds, paper planes, and matching poems.

For younger children, take a step outside to look at real clouds and share the classic picture book, It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles Shaw (HarperCollins, 1988). Read aloud some of Levy’s cloud poems and then have students tear white paper into corresponding cloud images and mount them on blue paper—imitating the illustrations of Shaw’s book.

The poems in her award winning collection, Splash! Poems of our Watery World, offer a similar smorgasbord of poems, but this time the topic is water in its many forms. Two of the poems, “Flood Line” and “River Games” describe the river as a living thing, almost with a personality. Tie these together with Jane Kurtz’s picture book poems, River Friendly, River Wild (Simon & Schuster 2000) about a young girl’s ordeal during North Dakota’s Red River Valley Flood in 1997. Or children may enjoy connecting Levy’s “water” poems with the concrete poetry about water in Joan Bransfield Graham’s Splish Splash (Houghton Mifflin 2001). They can try creating their own water, flood, or river poems on shaped paper. Here’s one sample poem to demonstrate Levy’s gift for sound, image, and rhythm:

Ocean Rhythms
by Constance Levy

Wave after wave,
Each wave
a beat
each beat
repeating
each stretch
receding.
This Earth's old wild heart
beating.

From: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ocean-rhythms/

Constance Levy offers more nature poems in A Tree Place and Other Poems (McElderry 1994) and I’m Going to Pet a Worm Today and Other Poems (McElderry 1991). Her style compares nicely with Kristine O’Connell in her poetry collection, Old Elm Speaks: Tree Poems (Clarion 1998) or Aileen Fisher’s Sing of the Earth and Sky: Poems about Our Planet and the Wonders Beyond (Boyds Mills Press 2003). For a fun follow up activity, share “Birdseed Song” from I’m Going to Pet a Worm Today and provide materials for making small, individual bird feeders. For example, spread peanut butter on the outside of a pine cone and then roll it in birdseed and hang it outdoors on a string as a homemade bird feeder. Be sure to look for her work in many anthologies as well as in her own, small delicate collections.

Image credits:www.pabook.libraries.psu.edu;www.sbfonline.com;search.barnesandnoble.com;www.myspace.com

Posting (not poem) by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2009. All rights reserved.

Happy birthday, Kenn (My Hippo Has the Hiccups) Nesbitt

Poet Kenn Nesbitt is celebrating his birthday today, as well as the imminent release of what is sure to be a hit, My Hippo Has the Hiccups, a new poetry book-plus-audio-CD produced by Sourcebooks. This Silverstein-Prelutsky-influenced collection of 120 poems caters to kids’ voracious appetites for humorous story poems, with plenty of silly pet poems, fairy tale parodies (another Cinderella poem for my collection!), and funny school poems, many topics with strong kid appeal. Nesbitt relies heavily on formulaic rhyming quatrains that kids will quickly chime in on—especially after listening to the CD performed by Nesbitt himself.

Once again, the audio is one of my favorite components and I’m so glad to see Sourcebooks continue to offer poetry for kids in audio form. Nesbitt is a strong performer of his own works, with a strong, clear delivery and pacing that is just right for the poem and the audience. The pause between tracks is also helpful for listeners and Nesbitt manages to make each track distinctive, using a variety of voicing and sound effects. Even without the text in front of her/him, the young reader can easily follow the poem—and that’s not as easy as it sounds.

There are 39 (out of the 120) poems available on the CD including most of the best of the collection, IMO, like “I Played a Game” which begs for kid pantomime or movement to accompany the audio, “(I’m Always in Parentheses)” which actually gives voice to the ignoble parentheses, and “Pet Shopping” with a lively backdrop of animal noises, to name a few. Kids will surely want to plug the CD in the car and join in—and I think the CD will hold up to repeated listening.

My favorite poems are probably those that diverge from the ever-present rhyming pattern (like the list format of “The Contents of My Desk” below) or incorporate clever wordplay (like “Anna Graham” = anagram) or punctuation-play (like “Hap-the-Happy-Hyphenator”). I hope Nesbitt will venture further into this inventive territory in the future.

The Contents of My Desk
by Kenn Nesbitt

A nail.
A nickel.
A snail.
A pickle.
A twisted-up slinky.
A ring for my pinky.
A blackened banana.
A love note from Hannah.
My doodles of rockets.
The lint from my pockets.
A fork-like utensil.
But sorry…
no pencil.

p. 22

[Wouldn’t it be fun to gather a few of these objects mentioned in the poem and put them in a box, set the box on a table in front of the kids, and then take each object out as you refer to it in reading the poem aloud? Poem props! Or challenge kids to create a comic strip or storyboard, with a drawing for each line of the poem, using each line as a caption or speech bubble.]

My Hippo Has the Hiccups is illustrated with black and white cartoon sketches by artist and animator Ethan Long. They have just the right touch of zany looseness to suit the poems and engage kid readers—and aspiring cartoonists.

Kenn Nesbitt’s web site, Poetry4Kids is one of the most popular and visited sites for kids on poetry, offering a multitude of resources and opportunities for kids to interact. He clearly has a heart for kids and their funny bones. He writes, “I know it always makes me feel good when I read a funny poem or hear a funny song. So, in my own small way, I'm trying to do my part to help people laugh, and just maybe make the world a happier place.” Happy birthday to YOU, Kenn. Thanks for hiccupping hippos!

P.S. Congratulations, Sourcebooks: The 40th NAACP Image Awards were given out last week and Hip Hop Speaks to Children, edited by Nikki Giovanni (Sourcebooks/Jabberwocky) won for Outstanding Literary Work—Poetry, the first time that a book for CHILDREN has won in this category. Congrats, Nikki and Sourcebooks! (I blogged about this anthology last Nov. 4. Love that audio, too!)

Join the Poetry Friday crew at the holly and the ivy.

Image credit: Sourebooks

Poetry of 2009 + Jean Little's Birthday

For this first posting of the new year, I thought I’d play “Janus” and look forward to the new poetry we can anticipate in 2009, since my last posting was a look back at all the poetry of 2008. I’ve been seeing several glimpses, with advance copies, publisher catalogs, emails, etc., and I’m very excited about what’s coming: a new Florian creation (on dinosaurs!), several Langston Hughes poem celebrations, something from Children’s Poet Laureate, Mary Ann Hoberman, a poem-a-day book by J. Pat Lewis, some poetry about work, animals, nature, and plenty of humor! Here’s the first list of the year! MUCH more to come…

Poetry Books Coming in 2009
1. Agee, Jon. 2009. Orangutan Tongs; Poems to Tangle Your Tongue. New York: Disney-Hyperion.
2. Florian, Douglas. 2009. Dinothesaurus. New York: Simon & Schuster.
3. Foxworthy, Jeff. 2009. Silly Street. Illus. by Steve Bjorkman. New York: HarperCollins.
4. Heard, Georgia. 2009. Falling Down the Page; A Book of List Poems. New York: Roaring Brook Press.
5. Hoberman, Mary Ann. 2009. All Kinds of Families. New York: Little, Brown.
6. Hopkins, Lee Bennett. 2009. City I Love. Ill. by Marcellus Hall. New York: Abrams.
7. Hopkins, Lee Bennett. 2009. Incredible Inventions. Illus. by Julia Sarcone-Roach. New York: HarperCollins.
8. Hopkins, Lee Bennett. 2009. Sky Magic. Ill. by Mariusz Stawarski. New York: Dutton.
9. Hughes, Langston. 2009. My People. Ill. by Charles R Smith Jr. New York: Simon & Schuster.
10. Hughes, Langston. 2009. The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Ill. by E. B. Lewis. New York: Disney-Hyperion.
11. Iyengar, Malathi Michelle. 2009. Tan to Tamarind: Poems About the Color Brown. Illus. by Jamel Akib. San Francisco, CA: Children’s Book Press.
12. Katz, Alan. 2009. Going, Going, Gone!: And Other Silly Dilly Sports Songs. New York: Simon & Schuster.
13. Lewis, J. Patrick. 2009. Countdown to Summer: A Poem for Every Day of the School Year. Ill. by Ethan Long. New York: Little Brown.
14. Lewis, J. Patrick. 2009. Skywriting: Poems in Flight. Ill. by Laszlo Kubinui. Minneapolis, MN: Creative Editions.
15. Lewis, J. Patrick. 2009. Spot the Plot! A Riddle Book of Book Riddles. Ill. by Lynn Munsinger. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.
16. Lewis, J. Patrick. 2009. The Underwear Salesman: And Other Jobs for Better or Verse. Ill. by Serge Bloch. New York: Simon & Schuster/Atheneum.
17. Nesbitt, Kenn. 2009. My Hippo Has the Hiccups with CD: And Other Poems I Totally Made Up. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks.
18. Paul, Ann Whitford. 2009. Word Builder. New York: Simon & Schuster.
19. Ruddell, Deborah. 2009. A Whiff of Pine, A Hint of Skunk. New York: Simon & Schuster.
20. Sidman, Joyce. 2009. Red Sings from Treetops; A Year in Colors. Illus. by Pamela Zagarenski. New York: Harcourt Houghton Mifflin.
21. Weinstock, Robert. 2009. Food Hates You, Too. New York: Disney-Hyperion.
22. Wilson, Karma. 2009. What's the Weather Inside? New York: Simon & Schuster.
23. Wolff, Virginia Euwer. 2009. This Full House. Harper Teen/The Bowen Press.
24. Zimmer, Tracie Vaughn. 2009. Steady Hands: Poems About Work. New York: Clarion.

ABOUT POETS AND POETRY
Dana, Barbara. 2009. A Voice of Her Own; Becoming Emily Dickinson. New York: HarperCollins.
Dotlich, Rebecca Kai. Bella & Bean. New York: Simon & Schuster.

+ Poet Birthday Today! Today is also Canadian author and poet Jean Little’s birthday. Blind from birth, many of her works focus on characters with disabilities. I remember reading her first book, Mine for Keeps (1962) about a girl who had cerebral palsy, when I was a little girl and I just loved it! Jean Little is known primarily for writing fiction, but has one book, in particular, that blends fictional vignettes and poetry from the point of view of a spunky ‘tween that is wonderful-- It’s Hey World, Here I Am! One of my favorite poems about poetry is from this book. It’s cranky and hilarious and captures a moment that many of us may have experienced!

After English Class
By Jean Little

I used to like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
I liked the coming darkness,
The jingle of harness bells,
Breaking—and adding to—the stillness,
The gentle drift of the snow . . .

But today, the teacher told us what everything stood for.
The woods, the horse, the miles to go, the sleep—
They all have “hidden meanings.”

It’s grown so complicated now that,
Next time I drive by,
I don’t think I’ll bother to stop.

From: Little, Jean. 1989. Hey World, Here I Am! New York: Harper & Row.

Start the year off right with Poetry Friday, hosted this week by A Year of Reading.

Image credits: childrensbooks.about.com;www.minervaclassics.com

Happy birthday, Lee Bennett Hopkins, on Scrabble Day

April 13 is supposedly Scrabble Day, one of my favorite word game/board games. Scrabble was created in 1938 by Alfred Mosher Butts. For a fun poetry connection, see how Mike Keith has used the scrabble squares to create a poem: A Scrabble®-Tile Anagram Poem by Mike Keith (2000).

Even more importantly, April 13 is Lee Bennett Hopkins’ birthday. Happy birthday, Lee! He has been the focus of discussion on the CCBC listserv recently as we’ve considered his enormous contributions to the field of poetry for young people. Check out my April 13 posting from last year for more information about Lee, his life, and his work. This year I’d like to talk about his latest anthology, America at War. It’s a beautiful, moving collection with more than fifty poems and paintings divided into eight sections featuring each “American” war, from the American Revolution to the Iraq War. Classic poems by the likes of Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg appear alongside contemporary voices such as Rebecca Kai Dotlich and Georgia Heard.

However, the book is not about war, as Hopkins points out in his poignant introduction. “It is about the poetry of war…. America at War presents the raw emotions of warfare as seen and felt by poets.” The design and layout of the book are also perfectly tuned to the tone of the work, with each poem appearing to be engraved upon the large, creamy page accompanied by expansive watercolor illustrations that convey a historical sweep that evokes the WPA murals of the past. Together, the poems and art capture both specific details of each conflict as well as deep and tender emotions that sadly cross the ages. Here’s one example:

Missing
by Cynthia Cotten

My brother is a soldier
in a hot, dry,
sandy place.
He’s missing—
missing things like
baseball, barbecues,
fishing, French fries,
chocolate sodas,
flame-red maple trees,
blue jays,
and snow.

I’m missing, too—
missing
his read-out-loud voice,
his super-special
banana pancakes,
his scuffed up shoes
by the back door,
his big-bear
good night
hug.

There are people
with guns
in that land of sand
who want to shoot
my brother.

I hope
they miss him,
too.

From Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 2008. America at War. New York: Margaret K. McElderry.

Be sure and look for Lee’s other poetry anthologies with a focus on U.S. history and geography:
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 1994. Hand in Hand: An American History through Poetry. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 1999. Lives: Poems about Famous Americans. New York: HarperCollins.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 2000. My America: A Poetry Atlas of the United States. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Hopkins, Lee Bennett, comp. 2002. Home to Me: Poems Across America. New York: Orchard.

Thank you for your continuing contributions to children, reading, and poetry, Lee!

Picture credit: Me!

National Poetry Month

Happy poetry month! It’s lovely to have a time when we try to focus EVERYONE’S attention on poetry (although many of us do that all year long, of course). I’m hoping to post every day this month with a variety of poems, poets, and topics. First off, I’m lifting some details from my book, Poetry People, A Practical Guide to Children’s Poets. If you’re looking for help in selecting and sharing poetry by 62 major poets writing for children, I hope you’ll check it out. I also have a few “extras” in the backmatter of the book, including a calendar of poet birthdays-- here's the April list:

April
7 Alice Schertle
12 Gary Soto
13 Lee Bennett Hopkins
20 April Halprin Wayland
22 William Jay Smith; Ron Koertge
25 George Ella Lyon
26 Marilyn Nelson
28 Barbara Juster Esbensen

and lists of:
Awards for Poetry for Young People
Poet Promotion Activities
How to Share Poetry
Poet Biographies, Autobiographies and Memoirs
Popular Poetry Web Sites
Poetry Anthologies
Poems About Libraries and Reading
Poetry Practices Checklist

In addition, I have gathered lists of:
Poets to Watch
People Who Write Other Things Plus Poetry
Verse Novelists
Anthologists
Classic Poets
Poets Who Write for Adults, Plus Children

I’d like to kick off the month with an eye on our poets to watch, which includes new names all the time. Here are individuals who are emerging as notable poets writing for children. Can you suggest others?
Adoff, Jaime
Burg, Brad
Cyrus, Kurt
Grandits, John
Greenberg, David
Johnson, Lindsay Lee
Katz, Alan
Kay, Verla
Lawson, JonArno
Lisa, Nicola W.
Medina, Jane
Mitton, Tony
Mordhorst, Heidi
Moss, Jeff
Nesbitt, Kenn
Paul, Ann Whitford
Pomerantz, Charlotte
Rex, Adam
Roemer, Heidi
Smith, Hope Anita
Van Meter, Gretchen
Wayland, April Halprin
Wolf, Alan
Zimmer, Tracy Vaughn

Here’s one fun poem by a new voice with a great metaphor that kids will love:

POETRY IS MY UNDERWEAR
by April Halprin Wayland

My sister found them.

Read them out loud.
She’s so proud,

she’s running to our parents
waving my poems in the air.
Doesn’t she know
she’s waving my underwear?

from Girl Coming in for a Landing by April Halprin Wayland (Knopf 2002)
Happy birthday, April on April 20!
Happy national poetry month, one and all.

Picture credit: daddytypes.com

Happy birthday, Langston

Today is Langston Hughes birthday, Feb. 1, 1902. Boy, I love this man’s poetry. It speaks to me on so many levels and resonates with readers and listeners of all ages and cultures. His collection, The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, is a staple of my poetry library and I refer to it often. (I chose it as one of “Fifteen Classics of Contemporary Poetry for Children” in my Book Links article in 2006; 15, (6), 12-15.) In fact, it was just reissued in a 75th anniversary edition (as I noted Dec. 31, 2007, in My favorite poetry books of 2007.) As I pored over previous blog postings to be sure I didn’t repeat myself, I realized that I refer to Hughes and his work often!

I wrote about his moving “Poem” (I loved my friend./He went away from me) last Sept. 21, 2007, and mentioned his work in my July 24, 2006 posting on “Multicultural Poetry” and my April 14, 2007 posting on Dream Day and my April 17, 2007 posting on the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Last year (Jan. 24), we celebrated Coretta Scott King Illustrator honors for Poetry for Young People: Langston Hughes edited by David Roessel and Arnold Rampersad, illustrated by Benny Andrews (published by Sterling Publishing) and also highlighted Carol of the Brown King: Nativity Poems illustrated by Ashley Bryan (Dec. 22, 2006).

So, for a change, I’d like to pay tribute to Hughes’s life and work with a poem by someone else—Walter Dean Myers, a man who clearly stands on Langston Hughes’s shoulders. This poem is in the voice of a Harlem salesman and comes from Myers’s amazing multi-voiced photo-illustrated, Here in Harlem: Poems in Many Voices (Holiday House, 2004).

Jesse Craig, 38
Salesman
by Walter Dean Myers

I knew Langston
Laughed with the man

In West Harlem
With me thinking

This is no Keats
No fair Shelley

This is Negro
Quintessential

Rice and collards
Down-home brother

He knew rivers
And rent-due blues

And what it meant
To poet Black

The Academy of American Poets is rich with additional information about Hughes and his work, including teaching resources and sample poems. There’s a wonderful audio clip from “The Voice of Langston Hughes” (by Folkways Records) of his reading of his poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” written in 1920, just after he graduated from high school! Additional audio (and more) can be found at the Langston Hughes Young Writers Project, including poems with musical accompaniment or translated into Spanish!

Thanks to Karen Edmisten for this week's Poetry Friday Round Up.

P.S. New: I’m honored to be linked to the Web site of Book Links as one of their new “Featured Blogs.”

Picture credit: concise.britannica.com

Happy Birthday, Janet Wong!

What’s with all these poets born in September? Clearly many poets’ parents were having a very merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, or happy new year in years gone by! All of these poets were born in September: Helen Frost, Paul Fleischman, Jack Prelutsky, Aileen Fisher, Sara Holbrook, Harry Behn, and Shel Silverstein. Let’s celebrate one more September poet’s birthday: Janet S. Wong!

Janet S. Wong was born on September 30, 1962, and grew up in California, the child of Korean and Chinese immigrants. She graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in History and then obtained her law degree from Yale. However, she was not happy practicing law and decided to make a change, focusing on writing for young people instead. She has since authored nearly two dozen picture books and poetry collections. Her poems have been featured in some unusual venues, including a car-talk radio show, on 5,000 subway and bus posters as part of the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority's "Poetry in Motion" program, and on the “Oprah” television show. She and her books have received numerous awards and honors, such as the International Reading Association's "Celebrate Literacy Award" for exemplary service in the promotion of literacy.

Janet Wong’s first two poetry collections, Good Luck Gold and Other Poems (Simon & Schuster, 1994) and A Suitcase of Seaweed, and Other Poems (Simon & Schuster, 1996) focus on her own background, exploring cultural connections and growing up with Korean and Chinese traditions. Many of the poems in these two collections lend themselves to poetry performance. For example, try "Face It" (A Suitcase Of Seaweed) with three stanzas that reflect the writer’s musings on her nose, her eyes, and her mouth and how each represents a different part of her identity. Three groups could each read a different stanza, using motions to point to each body part in turn.

Face It
by Janet Wong

My nose belongs
to Guangdong, China--
short and round, a Jang family nose.

My eyes belong
to Alsace, France--
wide like Grandmother Hemmerling's.

But my mouth, my big-talking mouth, belongs
to me, alone.

Wong also has authored several poetry collections on a variety of other topics. Behind the Wheel: Poems About Driving (Simon & Schuster, 1999) is a wonderful gift for the teenager who is learning to drive. The Rainbow Hand: Poems About Mothers and Children (Simon & Schuster, 2000) is an homage to mothers and our relationships with them and includes perfect “Mother’s Day” poem tributes. Wong has two collections of poems that address children's curiosity about dreams and superstitions with Night Garden: Poems from the World of Dreams (Simon & Schuster, 2000) and Knock on Wood: Poems about Superstitions (Simon & Schuster, 2003). Both are beautifully illustrated by Julie Paschkis and invite children to express their own beliefs and concerns-- perhaps poetically. Wong and Paschkis also teamed up for a third illustrated poetry collection this year, Twist, Yoga Poems (Simon & Schuster, 2007), which School Library Journal called “lovely to listen to and to look at.” For more information about Wong and her work, check out Poetry People.

Janet is a dynamic personality, a frequent presenter, and an advocate and mentor for many other authors, poets, and illustrators. I’m a big fan, as you can tell by many of my previous postings, including:
Tuesday, March 20, 2007 about her online chat with kids and her new photo-autobiography, When It Wriggles Away.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006 about the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and her poem about it, “Coin Drive.”
Happy birthday, Janet!

Thanks to AmoxCalli for hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup this week.

Picture credit: www.rfbdnj.org
Photo by Anne Lindsay

Happy birthday, Jack Prelutsky

Tomorrow is Jack Prelutsky’s birthday, so I’d like to send him a happy shout out and celebrate his life and work with a brief post.

He was born on September 8, 1940, in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Hunter College in Manhattan and worked as an opera singer, folk singer, truckdriver, photographer, plumber’s assistant, piano mover, cab driver, standup comedian, and more. He is married and lives in Seattle. He enjoys photography, carpentry, and creating games and "found object" sculpture and collages. He collects frog miniatures, art, and children’s poetry books of which he has over 5000.

Prelutsky has garnered many awards in his long career including citations as: New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, School Library Journal Best of the Best Book, International Reading Association/Children's Book Council Children's Choice, Library of Congress Book of the Year, Parents' Choice Award, American Library Association Notable Children's Recording, an Association for Library Services to Children Notable Book and Booklist Editor's Choice, among others. In 2006, he was honored as the first Children’s Poet Laureate by the national Poetry Foundation which included a $25,000 prize. His combined works have sold over a million copies and been translated into many languages.

Jack Prelutsky is a prolific writer, with many collections of poetry to his credit, including enormously popular anthologies he has compiled of other poets’ works, such as The Random House Book of Poetry for Children (Random House 1983), Read-aloud Rhymes for the Very Young (Knopf 1986), The Beauty of the Beast (Knopf 1997), and The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury (Knopf 1999). In addition, there are many collections of his own popular poetry available including books organized around topics such as Tyrannosaurus was a Beast: Dinosaur Poems (Mulberry 1993) and The Dragons are Singing Tonight (HarperTrophy 1998). His holiday poems are also very appealing: It’s Halloween (HarperTrophy 1996), It’s Christmas (HarperTrophy 1995), It’s Thanksgiving (HarperTrophy 1996), and It’s Valentine’s Day (HarperTrophy 1996), also available in one single audio anthology from HarperChildrensAudio (2005). And for younger children, he created a kind of “American Mother Goose” with nursery rhymes that reference cities and places in the United States, rather than European sites such as “London Bridge” or “Banbury Cross” in his collections, Ride a Purple Pelican (Greenwillow 1986) and Beneath a Blue Umbrella (Greenwillow 1990).

Jack Prelutsky became established as a poetic dynamo with the publication of The New Kid on the Block in 1984, his best-selling collection of 100+ poems illustrated by cartoonist James Stevenson with understated comic genius on every page. With poems that are nearly childhood standards now, like “Homework! Oh, Homework!” and “Bleezer’s Ice Cream,” the music of Prelutsky’s verse is irresistible. Since the publication of New Kid, he rivals Shel Silverstein for name recognition in the field of children’s poetry. Equally popular companion books followed, including Something Big Has Been Here (1990), A Pizza the Size of the Sun (1996), and It’s Raining Pigs & Noodles (2000). A fifth installment is slated for publication in 2008: My Dog May Be a Genius.

Many of Prelutsky’s poems lend themselves to choral reading and poem performance in a variety of ways. For example, his poems with repeated lines or refrains provide a natural opportunity for group participation on the refrain. One of my favorite strategies for performing Prelutsky’s poetry is singing. Count the beats in the first line or two of the poem; then count the beats in the first line or two of the song to see if they match. Many of Jack Prelutsky’s poems, in particular, match song tunes, which may not be surprising when one remembers he was a singer and musician before turning to poetry. Try his poem “Allosaurus” (from Tyrannosaurus was a Beast: Dinosaur Poems), a poem describing the ferocious qualities of this dinosaur sung to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” It’s a hilarious juxtaposition of lyrics and tune. Challenge the children to match other of his dinosaur poems to song tunes.

Allosaurus
by Jack Prelutsky

Allosaurus liked to bite,
its teeth were sharp as sabers,
it frequently, with great delight,
made mincemeat of its neighbors.

Allosaurus liked to hunt,
and when it caught its quarry,
it tore it open, back and front,
and never said, “I’m sorry!”

Allosaurus liked to eat,
and using teeth and talons,
it stuffed itself with tons of meat,
and guzzled blood by gallons.

Allosaurus liked to munch,
and kept from growing thinner
by gnawing an enormous lunch,
then rushing off to dinner.

From Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast
[Sung to the tune of “Row, row, row your boat”]

For more about Jack, his life, and his work, check out his new web site and look for Poetry People; A Practical Guide to Children's Poets (Libraries Unlimited, 2007).

P.S. As always, I'm glad to participate in the Friday Poetry Round Up, hosted this week by Semicolon. (Thanks!)

Picture credit: www.nssd112.org

Happy birthday, poet Dennis Lee

Dennis Lee (born on August 31 in Toronto) is widely regarded as Canada’s best-loved children’s poet and his work has garnered many awards including the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians Best Book Medals, Hans Christian Andersen Honour List citation, Canadian Library Association Award, and Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children nomination.

During his career, Lee has worked as a lecturer in English, as an editorial consultant, poetry editor, as the co-founder and editor of the House of Anansi Press in Toronto, and as a lyricist for the TV series “Fraggle Rock.” He also contributed to the scripts for the films, “The Dark Crystal” and “Labyrinth.” Dennis Lee holds an honorary doctorate from Trent University and his manuscripts and papers are in a permanent collection at the Fisher Rare Book Room at the University of Toronto.

The writing of Canadian poet Dennis Lee is often compared to that of Shel Silverstein or Jack Prelutsky because of his use of zany humor, strong rhythm, and child-friendly topics. Although he may not be as familiar to audiences in the United States, his work still holds wide appeal. In addition, he incorporates many uniquely Canadian references in his verses, easily understandable in context, but offering an added layer of richness to the poems—much like the use of Spanish words in the poems of Gary Soto or Pat Mora.

For an example of Lee’s work, look for The Ice Cream Store (HarperCollins, 1999), full of inventive, energetic and off-the-wall humor. From the title poem on, he celebrates the diversity of children comparing them to ice cream flavors such as chocolate, vanilla, and maple. His rhythmical poems invite children to read or sing along. Take his poem, "A Home Like a Hiccup," for example, that asks children to speculate about what they would be like if they had been born in a different place, and then provides a litany of place names that are fun to pronounce, “Like Minsk! or Omsk! or Tomsk! or Bratsk!” In the end, however, there’s no place like home, and children can provide the name of their individual hometowns when the last line is read aloud, “So the name of MY place is _____________.” Invite the children to locate the poem places on a map or mark the places that they were born or have lived.

A Home Like a Hiccup
by Dennis Lee

If I'd been born in a different place,
With a different body, a different face,
And different parents and kids to chase--
I might have a home like a hiccup:

Like Minsk! or Omsk! or Tomsk! or Bratsk!
Like Orsk or Kansk! like Kirsk or Murmansk!
Or Lutsk, Irkutsk, Yakutsk, Zadonsk,
Or even Pskov or Moskva!

But then again, on a different day
I might have been born a world away,
With brand new friends and games to play--
And a home like a waterfall whisper:

Like Asti, Firenze, Ferrara, Ravenna,
Like Timini, Pisa, Carrara, Siena,
Like Napoli, Como, San Marco, San Pietro,
Or Torre Maggiore, or Roma.

Now, those are places of great renown.
But after I'd studied them up and down,
I'd choose to be born in my own home town--
So the name of MY place is _____________ .

For more info about Dennis Lee, look for Poetry People; A Practical Guide to Children's Poets (Libraries Unlimited, 2007).

Picture credit: www.bookrapport.com

Hail Myra Cohn Livingston!

The Grandmere of Contemporary Children’s Poetry, Myra Cohn Livingston, was born on this day. Let’s pause to honor her amazing legacy.

Myra Cohn Livingston was born on August 17, 1926 in Omaha, Nebraska. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and worked as a professional French horn musician, reviewed books for Los Angeles newspapers, and served as a personal secretary to singer Dinah Shore and later to violinist Jascha Heifetz. She published her first book of poetry for children, Whispers and Other Poems, in 1958 and continued to write, teach, and mentor other poets until her death on August 23, 1996, in Los Angeles, California. She was married and had three children.

Although Myra Cohn Livingston is well known for her work as a poet and anthologist, she also had a tremendous impact on the entire field of children’s poetry. In particular, she was a senior extension lecturer at the University of California in Los Angeles for over twenty years and mentored many of the next generation of children’s poets, including Janet Wong, Kristine O’Connell George, Deborah Chandra, Ann Whitford Paul, April Halprin Wayland, Madeleine Comora, Sonya Sones, Joan Bransfield Graham, Tony Johnston, Alice Schertle, Monica Gunning, Karen B. Winnick, Anita Wintz, among others. (Thanks, Lee! Whom am I still missing?)

Livingston’s numerous awards include: Texas Institute of Letters award, Parent’s Choice Award, National Jewish Book Award, and the University of Minnesota Kerlan Award, among many others. She was also the recipient of the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children for her entire body of work.

Called the “poet’s poet,” Myra Cohn Livingston’s writing is characterized by its elegance and sensitivity and its devotion to form and structure. Although many of her 50+ books are now out of print, they may still be on the library’s shelves. She was a pioneer in the creation of thematic anthologies that gathered poems together on current single topics such as holidays, animals, and seasons. These include topical collections of her own original poetry such as:

A Circle of Seasons (Holiday House 1982)
Sky Songs (Holiday House 1984)
Celebrations (Holiday House 1985)
Earth Songs (Holiday House 1986)
Sea Songs (Holiday House 1986)
Space Songs (Holiday House 1988)
Up in the Air (Holiday House 1989)
Birthday Poems (Holiday House 1989)
Festivals (Holiday House 1996)

This year Holiday House is publishing one of Livingston’s early poems in a lovely new picture book format illustrated by Will Hillenbrand. The book features one poem, “Calendar,” from Wide Awake and Other Poems which first appeared in 1959. Each line of the poem appears in an oversize font on a double page spread featuring Ezra Jack Keats-like collages. The effect is an inviting walk through the year highlighting moments familiar and appealing to many young children.

Calendar
by Myra Cohn Livingston

January shivers,
February shines,
March blows off
the winter ice,
April makes the
mornings nice,
May is hopscotch lines.

June is
deep blue swimming,
Picnics are July,
August is
my birthday,
September whistles by.

October is
for roller skates,
November is
the fireplace,
December is
the best because
of sleds
and snow
and Santa Claus.

[Note that the poet’s birthday is in August!]
Kudos to Holiday House for featuring Livingston’s lyrical poetry in a new release, particularly since so many of her gems are sadly out of print.

In addition to her own poetry, Livingston compiled several other anthologies with poems by many different poets. These include:
Easter Poems (Holiday House 1985)
Thanksgiving Poems (Holiday House 1985)
Poems for Jewish Holidays (Holiday House 1986)
Valentine Poems (Holiday House 1987)
Poems for Mothers (Holiday House 1988)
Poems for Fathers (Holiday House 1989)
If You Ever Meet a Whale (Holiday House 1992)
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Poems About Small Things (HarperCollins 1994)
These wonderful collections are examples of what poetry anthologies are all about. Children may enjoy assembling their own collections centered around a favorite theme or topic.

Finally, Myra Cohn Livingston also authored several important professional resources for adults who work with children including The Child As Poet: Myth Or Reality? (Horn Book 1984), Climb Into The Bell Tower: Essays On Poetry (Harper 1990), and Poem-Making: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry (Harper 1991), a book suitable for young people who aspire to be writers, too. For more about Livingston and many of the other poets she nurtured, check out Poetry People; A Practical Guide To Children's Poets (Libraries Unlimited, 2007).

Picture credit: www.theweeweb.co.uk

Celebrating poet Betsy Franco’s birthday

I had the opportunity to meet poet Betsy Franco this summer when she kindly participated in the Poetry Jam session I moderated at the ALA conference in Washington, D.C. in June. What a fun person! Petite, dynamic, and direct, with a quick sense of humor, she won the crowd with her personality AND her poetry. Today is her birthday, so I’d like to send a shout out to her and nudge you all to check out her work, which ranges widely from rhythmic and even math-related poetry for the very young to edited anthologies of the writing of teens. She is a former teacher and educational publisher with a studio art degree from Stanford and a master’s degree in education from Lesley College in Massachusetts. She is married, with three sons, and lives in Palo Alto, California. Her writing (numbering 40+ books) has been recognized on the American Library Association's list of Best Books for Young Adults and on the New York Public Library list of Books for the Teen Age.

A sampling of her poetry includes:
Mathematickles!
Counting Our Way to the 100th Day!
Counting Caterpillars and Other Math Poems

Edited anthologies of poetry written by teens:
You Hear Me?, Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys
Things I Have to Tell You, Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls
Night Is Gone, Day Is Still Coming, Stories and Poems by American Indian Teens and Young Adults

For just a taste, here’s a fun math-inspired poem by Betsy Franco (from Mathematickles):

thunder
+ lightning
+ wind
+ rain that’s warm
= summer storm

Look for more wonderful words from Betsy Franco (mother of actor, James Franco!)

Picture credit: www.rcowen.com

Poet Mary Ann Hoberman's birthday

It's poet and author Mary Ann Hoberman’s birthday, so I’d like to post this little bio-tribute to her and her work. For more complete information, please look for Poetry People; A Practical Guide to Children's Poets (Libraries Unlimited, 2007).

Mary Ann Hoberman was born on August 12, 1930, in Stamford, Connecticut. As a teenager, she wrote for her school newspaper and edited her high school yearbook. She received a bachelor’s degree in history from Smith College and earned her master’s degree in English Literature from Yale University thirty-five years later. In the mean time, she married and had four children. She and her husband have lived for over forty years in a house that her husband designed in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Hoberman has taught writing and literature at all levels and co-founded and performed with a children’s theatre group. But when her first book was published in 1957, she turned her attention to writing for children. Her work has received many citations including a National Book Award in 1983 for A House is a House for Me. She received the National Council of Teachers of English Excellence in Poetry for Children Award in 2003 for her entire body of work.

Mary Ann Hoberman’s poetry often targets our youngest audience with rhythm and repetition, usually published in picture book form or as “read aloud” rhyming “stories,” such as in You Read to Me, I'll Read to You: Very Short Fairy Tales to Read Together (Little Brown, 2004). Other inviting collections include The Llama Who Had No Pajama: 100 Favorite Poems (Harcourt, 1998), Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Brothers: A Collection of Family Poems (Little Brown, 2001) and My Song is Beautiful: Poems and Pictures in Many Voices (Little Brown, 1994).

For one outstanding example of Hoberman’s style, look for her poem “Take Sound” which she composed especially for the ceremony at which she was given the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. It also appears in Paul Janeczko’s poetry anthology Seeing the Blue Between (Candlewick, 2002). Hoberman acknowledges that the poem pays homage to the great children's poet David McCord, the first recipient of the award, and in particular to his poem, "Take Sky," by echoing its title and cadence. It focuses on the pleasures of sharing the sounds and words of poetry with children and is a great way to begin a poetry lesson or unit or just to celebrate Hoberman’s gift for poetic expression.

Take Sound
by Mary Ann Hoberman

Each word a poem.
Take sound—

Its mysteries abound:
To hear a sound;
To sound to find;
Or to be sound
In body, mind;
A stretch of water
Wide and clear;
To register
Upon the ear—
Each separate meaning
Hovers, tense
Above the more
Intended sense.
Each part of speech
Another trope,
A turn
In the kaleidoscope.
And in this lovely
Layered thing,
The origins
Of language sing,
Alive, ambiguous, absurd—
In the beginning was the word.

Picture credit: www.nationalbook.org

Paul Janeczko’s Birthday today

Happy birthday, Paul B. Janeczko!

Former English teacher Paul Janeczko began compiling poem anthologies for his students in the 1970’s which led to more formal publication of many, many anthologies for teens and children, as well as poetry of his own in the years since. He has also written books for teachers on using poetry and poetry writing in the classroom and is now a frequent speaker and workshop leader. Janeczko’s work has been recognized with many awards and “best” list citations, including the American Library Association Books for Young Adults, American Library Association Notable Books, New York Public Library Best Books, School Library Journal Best Young Adult Books of the Year, among others.

Paul Janeczko has created many appealing anthologies of poetry for young people such as Dirty Laundry Pile: Poems in Different Voices (HarperCollins, 2001), Very Best (Almost) Friends: A Collection of Friendship Poetry (Candlewick, 1998), and Hey, You!: Poems to Skyscrapers, Mosquitoes, and Other Fun Things (HarperCollins, 2007), as well as authoring several of his own original poetry books such as That Sweet Diamond: Baseball Poems (Atheneum, 1998), Stardust otel (Scholastic, 1993), Brickyard Summer (Orchard, 1989) and the novel in verse Worlds Afire (Candlewick, 2004). In several of his anthologies for children gather poems based on unique themes particular to poetic form, from concrete poetry to haiku including:

Poetry from A to Z: A Guide to Young Writers (Bradbury, 1994)
A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms (Candlewick, 2005)
A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems (Candlewick, 2001)
Wing Nuts: Screwy Haiku with J. Patrick Lewis (Little Brown, 2006)
Stone Bench in an Empty Park (Orchard Books, 2000)

As a response activity, children may enjoy discovering unusual forms of poetry or even trying their hands at writing them. Or working as a group, children can create their own alphabet book of poetry with each child responsible for a letter to build a poem upon. Other Janeczko anthologies that offer additional guidance to budding poets include Seeing the Blue Between: Advice and Inspirations for Young Poets (Candlewick, 2002), The Place My Words Are Looking For: What Poets Say About And Through Their Work (Bradbury, 1990), and Poetspeak: In Their Work, About Their Work: A Selection (Bradbury, 1983).

For more information about Janeczko and his work, look for Poetry People; A Practical Guide to Children's Poets (Libraries Unlimited, 2007).


Picture credit: www.authorsontheweb.com