It's CYBILS time

It’s that time again—time to nominate your favorite poetry book of the year for the Cybils award. FYI: Cybils is an acronym for the “Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards” and this is the fourth year the bloggers have gathered to choose the best books in several categories, including poetry, of course! Yours truly is serving as a judge once again (in Round 1 this time) and I encourage you to cast your vote before nominations close on Oct. 15. There have been 21 poetry books nominated thus far, but there are still several lovely apples and oranges to be considered. Check my January 2 and February 6 postings for a list of poetry books of 2009 (although a few more popped up along the way). And nominate today! Anyone can nominate, but only one title per category per person.

My fellow Panelists for Round I in reading, discussing, and deciding on the “short list” of best poetry are:
Bruce Black, Wordswimmer
Kristy Dempsey, Reverie--Abstract Musings on a Hopeful Life
Kelly Fineman (the fantastic poetry award category organizer), Writing and Ruminating
Tricia Stohr-Hunt, The Miss Rumphius Effect

The Judges for Round II who select the single winner are:
Sara Lewis Holmes, Read Write Believe
Elaine Magliaro, Wild Rose Reader
Greg Pincus, GottaBook
Jama Rattigan, Alphabet Soup
Stacey Shubitz, Two Writing Teachers

What an awesome group of bloggers, one and all. And please consider tooting the Cybils horn on your own blogs!

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

Image credit: http://dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils/about-the-cybils-awards.html

Book Links + Booklist Oct. Update

Once again I find myself apologizing for being gone awhile. I think I hit the blog “wall” and ran out of steam for a bit, but I’m back with a slew (as we say in Texas) of poetry news!

One of my favorite teaching resources, Book Links magazine, has merged with it’s parent, Booklist, to become a regular supplement beginning this month. It’s still full of all kinds of wonderful items with a focus on social studies in this issue, including articles about war, heroes, persecution and intolerance. (Our October issue of Bookbird has a similar focus, interestingly enough!)

My “Everyday Poetry” column looks at works of fiction published this year that feature characters reading and writing poetry, including:

• Bella and Bean by Rebecca Kai Dotlich
• Stanza by Jill Esbaum
• Gooney Bird is So Absurd by Lois Lowry
• Also Known as Harper by Ann Haywood Leal
• Metamorphosis by Betsy Franco

In addition, the author of each of these books was kind enough to share a few great comments with me which are included in the piece. (Thank you, all!) The full text is available at BooklistOnline (but I can't seem to get the link to post here-- sorry!).

And look whose book is featured on the COVER of this issue of Book Links… drum roll… Laura Purdie Salas and Stampede! Go, Laura! I reviewed Stampede earlier this year and just loved it and she was kind enough to provide the unpublished poem that is featured in this October issue of Book Links. Her poem is “Fiesta,” inspired by fond memories of her Spanish teacher Señora Everson and captures the fun of a foreign language class taught by a teacher with pizzazz, full of the interlingual (25 cents please) use of Spanish. You’ll have to get the magazine to get your hands on that poem, but it comes with permission to reproduce it! Thank you again, Laura, for sharing this gem.

Join the rest of the Poetry Friday crew with Kelly Herold at Crossover this week.

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

Image credit:booklistonline

Messing around with school poetry

(Sorry to be AWOL for a bit, but I’ve been to Malaysia for the IBBY Board meeting, part of my duties as co-editor of Bookbird. What a trip!) Now, Labor Day has come and gone and surely everyone is back to school by now. It’s a good time to break out the school-related poetry—one of my favorite topics for sharing with kids, since it’s their day-to-day world for nearly the first two decades of their lives.

And I’m pleased to plug a new collection by Betsy Franco that is written to be performed by two voices—with suggestions for even more creative performance options. It’s Messing Around the Monkey Bars and other School Poems for Two Voices, an engaging picture book collection illustrated by Jessie Hartland (Candlewick, 2009). Franco presents 19 poems, each in spunky double-page spreads printed in colorful crayon shades on extra thick paper. Hartland’s gangly story-like art suggests two-dimensional drawings kids would create and the big fat friendly font is extra readable—along with Franco’s explanation of the regular, bold, and italicized-bold fonts for each voice in the reading.

Franco’s jaunty rhythms are well suited to reading aloud and she has designed these poems well for the back-and-forth of two voices or two groups. She also takes the child through the school day from riding the bus in the morning through the noisy and quiet classroom moments, to library time and lunch time, to breaks for recess/PE, and a bike ride home. There’s even a clever poem about the Lost & Found!

Here’s just a sample—strong in personification and imagery, plus fun to read aloud and act out. As Franco explains in her introductory “Author’s Note”:

• Voice 1 reads the plain text. (Or Group 1)
• Voice 2 reads the bold text. (Or Group 2)
• Both (or all) read the bold italicized text.

Anatomy Class
By Betsy Franco

The chair has
arms.
The clock,
a face.
The kites have
long and twirly tails.
The tacks have
heads.
The books have
spines.
The toolbox has
a set of nails.
Our shoes have
tongues,
the marbles,
eyes.
The wooden desk has
legs and seat.
The cups have
lips.
My watch has
hands.
The classroom rulers all have
feet.

Heads, arms hands, nails,
spines, legs, feet, tails,
face, lips, tongues, eyes.

What a surprise!

Is our classroom alive?

Franco, Betsy. 2009. Messing Around the Monkey Bars and other School Poems for Two Voices. Ill. by Jessie Hartland. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, p. 18-19.

Isn’t that clever? Additional performances could add pantomiming or motions to indicate body parts. Or research the ASL (American Sign Language) signs for signing the poem. And although Hartland depicts each of these personified images around the perimeter of the poem, I know kids will enjoy drawing or creating their own dozen classroom creatures with humanized anatomy!

Although the look and the sound of the poems will have quick appeal to young children just starting out in school, the poems are also full of poetic devices that can serve as playful examples for older kids, particularly for onomatopoeia, as well as models of different poem forms.

Pair this collection with another new 2009 release, Laura Purdie Salas’s Stampede, Poems to Celebrate the Wild Side of School. Also look for Marilyn Singer’s First Food Fight this Fall, about the school year from the voices of children. Two other 2009 anthologies that include several school-focused poems include J. Patrick Lewis’s Countdown to Summer: A Poem for Every Day of the School Year and Karma Wilson’s What's the Weather Inside? And just search for “school” to see more blog postings about school-related poetry—it’s a regular topic.

Hope the new school year is great—and full of poetry—for all of you!

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

Image credit: