2011 LBH Award Winner Announced

I'm excited to offer this scoop:

The 2011 winner of the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award is:
The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane by C.M. Millen, illustrated by Andrea Wisnewski



There was just one honor book named and it is:
Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman, Illustrated by Rick Allen


This annual award goes to the best book of children's poetry published in the United States in the preceding year. It is co-sponsored with Lee Bennett Hopkins himself along with the University Libraries, the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, and additional sponsor, Pennsylvania School Librarians Association.

I'm sad to say that The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane flew under my radar last year and I have not read it yet-- but will soon. A bit of research turned up heaps of review commentary on the publisher's web site (Charlesbridge), plus a fascinating author's note. Here's a quick summary from the site:

In a monastery in the mountains of Mourne during the Middle Ages, one young monk struggled to focus on his task: copying the Bible and other scholarly books with plain brown ink made from wood bark in plain brown books in his plain brown robe at his plain brown desk. Brother Theophane was soon transferred from the scribe’s room and assigned to make the ink that the brothers used. With his natural curiosity, Theophane discovered that inks could be made from other plants besides the wood bark. Berries and leaves produced other beautiful colors. And soon, the books the monks made were illuminated with colors and drawings.

C.M. Millen’s charming story of a young monk who defied the discipline of the monastery and found his own way to express the beauty of the world will inspire young readers to explore their own world and find their own voices. Andrea Wisnewski’s illustrations, inspired by the illuminated letters that the medieval monks created in books like the Book of Kells, bring to life the colors and beauty that surrounded Brother Theophane amidst the plain world of the monastery.

Congratulations, C. M. Millen!

And congratulations, Joyce Sidman, for another well-deserved recognition for The Dark Emperor, too.

Well done, committee!
(Go, Beth.)

P.S. Stay tuned... my students this spring are working on creating readers' guides and digital trailers for many of the LBH award and honor books recognized since the award's inception. I'll post more about our homemade LBH Award Teaching Toolbox soon...


Image credit: http://www.charlesbridge.com/contributorinfo.cfm?ContribID=463

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

Poetry news nuggets

Once again, a variety of poetry items have crossed my desk, so I thought I'd gather and share them here. Plus, please indulge a bit of self-promotion of a variety of poetry projects I have in development with colleagues and students. More to come!

Poetry at the Kennedy Center
Don't miss Caroline Kennedy's POETS AND PRESIDENTS featuring poets Marilyn Nelson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Charles R. Smith, Jr., and Marilyn Singer (thanks for the info, Marilyn) interviewed by Maria Salvadore on Friday, Jan. 21. It was part of the Kennedy Center Performing Arts Program and is now available as a free video download for educators. There is also an educator's guide available. Register, download, and view for free at:
http://www.kennedy-center.org/education/pwtv/

CLPE Poetry Award News from IBBY Ireland
IBBY Ireland recently announced that the 2010 CLPE Poetry Award was won by Carol Ann Duffy for her anthology, New and Collected Poems for Children, illustrated by Alice Stevenson. The shortlist for the Award, which was generously sponsored by Travelling Books, included James Carter and Graham Denton's Orange Silver Sausage, Adrian Mitchell's Umpteen Pockets, illustrated by Tony Ross, Michael Rosen’s A-Z; The Best Children’s Poetry from Agard to Zephaniah and Kit Wright's The Magic Box, illustrated by Peter Bailey. The judges were John Agard, Andrew Lambirth and Lindsay MacRae. The chair of the judges was Margaret Meek Spencer.

FYI from the award website: The CLPE Poetry Award for a book of poetry for children was launched by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) in 2003. Winners have included John Agard, Grace Nichols, Roger McGough and Carol Ann Duffy. In establishing this award we wanted to highlight an important branch of children’s literature and ensure that it receives proper recognition. The award is presented annually for a book of poetry published in the preceding year.

Upcoming British Conference:
Children's Playground Games and Songs in the New Media Age
This conference on Tuesday 15th March 2011 in the British Library Conference Centre, London will launch a new British Library website: Playtimes: A Century of Children’s Games and Rhymes. The website contains new material collected during the project, selections from the Library’s ‘Opie Collection of Children’s Games and Songs’ and films and photographs from other nationwide archives. The conference also involves the launch of the associated AHRC-funded research project and a keynote address by Professor Michael Rosen, former children’s laureate.

CYBILS Awards Announced Monday
Cybils Awards in each genre category will be announced on Monday, Feb. 14. The poetry finalists once again were:

• Borrowed Names by Jeannine Atkins
• Dark Emperor by Joyce Sidman
• Mirror, Mirror by Marilyn Singer
• Scarum Fair by Jessica Swaim
• Sharing the Seasons edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins
• Switching on the Moon edited by Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters
• Ubiquitous by Joyce Sidman

Next Children’s Poet Laureate
The next Children's Poet Laureate will be announced at the Poetry Foundation's "Lily/Pegasus Awards" presentation to be held at "The Arts Club" in Chicago on May 11. Previous Laureates include Mary Ann Hoberman and Jack Prelutsky.

New Poetry e-Resources Coming
I’m getting my students this spring semester involved in helping to research and contribute to several poetry promotion projects debuting in April, including:


• Creating web sites for children’s poets who don’t already have one (such as Valerie Worth, Aileen Fisher, David McCord)
• Creating an electronic resource with readers guides and digital trailers for books that have won Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry award and honor distinctions
• Posting daily reviews of 2011 poetry titles in my Poetry Tag Reviews series

I'll let you know when all these resources go public.

Bookbird April 2011
I’m so excited about the April issue of Bookbird, the journal of international children’s literature that I co-edit. The entire issue is focused on the topic of poetry for children and includes 9 fascinating articles about poetry in Korea, France, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Greece, Slovakia, Romania, Spain, and the U.S. To subscribe to Bookbird, go here.

We have tried to include many actual poems and poem excerpts in both the original language and English wherever possible. We are so pleased to feature the poetry of JonArno Lawson, Helen Frost, Alain Serres, Iordan Chimet, Oton Župančič, Niko Grafenauer, Miroslav Košuta, Dane Zajc, Yiannis Ritsos, Dimitris Manthopoulos, Pavlina Pampoudi, Theti Chortiati, Daniel Hevier, Elena Čepčeková, Krista Bendová, Ľubomír Feldek, Miroslav Válek, Dong-min Ju, Pablo Neruda, Shuntaro Tanikawa, and even by children themselves throughout the pages of this issue.

TLA Poetry Round Up
Once again (for the 7th year in a row), I’ll be hosting the Poetry Round Up (modeled after the ALSC Poetry Blast) at the annual Texas Library Association conference in Austin on April 15. Participating poets include: Calef Brown, Julia Durango, Margarita Engle, Helen Frost, Kristine O’Connell George, Marilyn Singer, Robert Paul Weston, and Lisa Wheeler. Come join us, if you can. TLA puts on an amazing conference, if I do say so myself! Plus, I'll share more info about this session, even if you can't join us, I promise.

PoetryTagTime
Poet and friend Janet Wong and I are launching the first-ever electronic-only poetry anthology for children debuting on Kindle on April 1. It’s called PoetryTagTime and features 30 poems for children (ages 0-8) by 30 different prominent poets who “tagged” each other, one at a time, offering poems connected one to another. Lots more info about this special project coming soon.

 We are very excited about it!

Meanwhile, head on over to Carol's (Rasco) at RIF (Reading is Fundamental) for this week’s Poetry Friday gathering.

Image credit: 



poetry foundation, IBBYIreland, CYBILS, Kennedy Center, St. Peters College

Posting by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2011. All rights reserved.

What’s for Dinner?

New this week is a poetry book destined to be a sure-fire hit with both kids and science teachers! It's What’s for Dinner? Quirky, Squirmy Poems from the Animal World by new poet Katherine Hauth (published by Charlesbridge).

The organizing theme of the book is so appealing: which animals eat which animals (and plants) and how. Delve into more than two dozen animal examples told in short, generally free verse poems accompanied by clever cartoon portraits (by illustrator David Clark) that manage to be both helpful and zany. The collection is bookended by theme poems, “What’s for Dinner” and “Eating Words” with 29 clever, succinct, and highly visual poems in a variety of formats in between. The occasional consonance and rhyme are spot on and scan nicely and unexpected syncopations mix up the rhythms here and there to nice effect.

Seldom has the food chain received such red carpet poetical treatment with unexpected examples of the relationships between predator and prey. Consider the hawk couple whose courtship includes tossing a snake between them or the brown bat that forms a bowl by curving its tail to eat insects like popcorn. Some poems even reveal the connections between multiple participants in the “Food Chain”:















[BTW: This is NOT the illustration for this poem, but I needed to capture the alignment for the poem, so I resorted to making the slide above.]

Kids will love discovering how crows and wolves help each other eat, how slugs stop other creatures from eating them, four ways polar bears catch seals, and my personal favorite, how “hundreds of beetles and moths” live on the back of the sloth, jumping off his back “on the weekly occasion of Sloth’s defecation” to “lay their eggs on his dung/ with its sugar and starch/ that will nourish their young.” Then, they “jump back onto the back of the Sloth” for another week til the process is repeated. The poem ends, “Quite a menagerie,/feeding in harmony” an excellent summary for the entire book! The combination of true and fascinating facts, the focus on EATING, and occasional references to poop and its necessary place in the food chain are all sure to grab young readers.

As an added plus, teachers and librarians will be pleased to find that the poems are examples of symbiosis, mutualism, parasitism, and other science concepts, all briefly explained in a clear and helpful section, “More Words About the Poems.” Other useful backmatter includes an information-rich paragraph to accompany each poem in an extensive “More Words About the Animals,” plus a bibliography of “Where to Learn More About the Animals in This Book.”

As a former sixth grade teacher (where kids enjoy a bit of the macabre, especially based on fact), I would share a poem just before a snack or lunch break—kids would eat that up! :-) And they’ll definitely want to do more research to see “is that really true?” Follow up with more related poetry, such as:

• Bulion, Leslie. 2006. Hey There, Stink Bug! Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge.
• Florian, Douglas. 1998. Insectlopedia: Poems and Paintings. San Diego: Harcourt.
• Florian, Douglas. 1996. On the Wing: Bird Poems and Paintings. San Diego: Harcourt.
• George, Kristine O’Connell. 2004. Hummingbird Nest: A Journal of Poems. Orlando: Harcourt.
• Harley, Avis. 2001. Leap into Poetry: More ABCs of Poetry. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press.
• Lewis, J. Patrick, 1998. The Little Buggers. New York: Dial.
  
• Sidman, Joyce. 2006. Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  
• Sidman, Joyce. 2005. Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems. Ill. By Beckie Prange. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Sidman, Joyce. 2010. Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature’s Survivors. Ill. by Becky Prange. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Singer, Marilyn. 1989. Turtle in July. New York: Macmillan.

P.S. I'm teaching my graduate course in poetry for children again this spring and one of my students is developing a digital trailer for this book-- which I hope to share soon. So stay tuned for more...

Don't forget to join the throng at Poetry Friday hosted by Dori Reads.

Image credit: 

Charlesbridge

Posting by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2011. All rights reserved.