By Heart

As the Person of Poetry for several classes, I seek poems each week that I believe will make the listeners think, laugh, ponder, and wonder. One of my favorites is Caroline Kennedy's A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poems for Children. Last month, her second book of collected poems was released: Poems to Learn By Heart. 

In the introduction, she says so many important things about why poetry and memorizing poems are important: 

"In today's world, where it is so easy to look things up, we discount the value of memorization."

"Poets distill life's lessons into the fewest possible words. But those tiny packages of thought countain worlds of images and experiences and feeling."

"If we learn a poem by heart, it is ours forever - and better still, we can share it with others, yet not have to give it away."

The rest of the book is divided by themes. Each section begins with insights into the theme and reasons why some of the poems were selected. I have already read several aloud to my classes!

• Here I Am (self poems)
• I Dreamed I Had to Pick A Mother Out (family poems)
• I'm Expecting You! (friendship and love poems)
• I Met a Little Elf-Man, Once (fantastical creatures in poems)
• Where Can a Man Buy a Cap for His Knee? (poems of nonsense)
• It Is the Duty of the Student (school poems)
• We Dance Round in a Ring and Suppose (sport and game poems)
• Four Score and Seven Years Ago (war poems)
• The World is So Full of a Number of Things (nature poems)
• Extra Credit (quite long poems)

Jon J. Muth's illustrations are extraordinary and both complement and add surprise to the poems! A young clarinetist on a high wire accompanies "I Am Cherry Alive". A girl with a butterfly net chases her annoying brother in "Brother". A history-cloaked character slogs through the snow next to "The Lesson" by Billy Collins. 

There are so many wonderful things about this book. Now I need to try memorizing some of the poems I love.

Mighty Jackie

Despite the winter storm warning that goes into effect shortly, we are reading about baseball this week during library time. Mighty Jackie: The Strike-Out Queen by Marissa Moss has the listeners entranced. Not one student has heard about Jackie Mitchell, the young woman who consecutively struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig during a 1931 baseball game between the New York Yankees and her own Chattanooga Lookouts. The drama of her story unfolds with a few pages of early history (including a bit about how Dazzy Vance of the Brooklyn Dodgers helped teach Jackie to pitch). Then the intensity of that game is described with the perfect amount of dialogue interspersed. C. F. Payne's illustrations convey the dismay and disgust of Babe Ruth, as well as Jackie Mitchell's pride.

We read the author's note (of course!) after Jackie's triumphant game ends, and the children express their anger at the baseball commissioner's decision to void her contract, claiming he was protecting her because the sport was "too strenuous." The kids have many ideas about why he really did that. It has been an excellent book to share aloud, as well as a motivator for readers to check out more picture book biographies.

Say What?

Tomorrow will be my last day of reading Margaret Peterson Haddix's book Say What? to the second graders during information literacy time. Though reading the same chapters six times in a row can get boring for the reader, I must say their reactions to this story keep me as engaged as my listeners! I wish I had read it when my children were younger. The technique used by the parents to keep the kids in shape is ingenious.

Here is the premise: Kids are not listening to parents, so the parents respond to every misdeed with a comment that would be better uttered for a different misbehavior. For example, if a child reclines on the couch while still wearing muddy sneakers, the mother does not rant about getting off the couch. She might say, "No dessert until you clean your plate" or "Eat your vegetables." When the children in the story find the magazine article and get wise about "parentspeak", they make a list of all the things they say that annoy their parents. For one mixed-up evening, the family utters wrong statements back and forth, ultimately resulting in laughter. All of these must be universal because my second grade students nod, giggle, and say, "I've heard that one" or "I've said that" in response to the reading. 

Just the other day, I had the opportunity to respond to one student's misbehavior with a wrong statement, and just like that, the behavior and attitude changed. Say What? is really an excellent idea!

Three Triceratops Tough

Attending yesterday's puppet show meant missing the publication party for Steve Shashkan's new book. I arrived at the bookshop just as he was signing the copies for three young readers in my world...2 1/2 hours after the event began! From the photographs I have seen, the place was packed for his reading, singing, and signing time.

When the Tuff brothers (68 millions years ago) went looking for grub, they discovered a lush green valley, perfect for their dinner time delights. They didn't count on the fierce Tyrannosaurus Rex, who declares to Stanley Tuff, "Dinner is served..and you're it!" Stanley tells the carnivore to wait for his older and bigger brother. Rufus Tuff then persuades the T. rex to delay his dinner until their older and bigger brother, Bob. Though you know the ending of the goat version, this one concludes with a bit of a twist.

Readers will love listening and chanting along to the "Clip! Clomp!" of the dinosaurs' feet (which I love for their boxiness)! For an excellent, fun triceratops headband accompaniment to the story, visit Steve's website : http://stephenshaskan.com/rhymes_with-Trashcan/?tag=triceratops

Mother Goose - The Musical

  

The Loki Puppet Players presented an incredible version of Mother Goose to an audience of over 200 this morning at the St. Paul Central Library (http://www.sppl.org/about/library-history/central-library-history), and I had an SRO view of the show. It began with an introduction from Mother Goose herself, with help from Bo Beep's sheep, Bob (or Baaaaaaahhhb), Belinda, and Bono. The sheep wanted to plan a birthday celebration as a surprise to Bo Beep and needed help finding a cake, candles, a game, a present, a dish, and a spoon. Though Bo Beep returned often in search of the sheep, the sheep interacted with the Bakers (who performed a dancing version of "Pat-a-Cake"), Jack Be Nimble, the piñata seller, Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, and the cat, dish, and spoon (of "Hey, Diddle Diddle" fame).  Puppeteer, librarian and master storyteller Kimberly Faurot (also my good friend) was literally behind the whole show. I laughed. I clapped. I sang the songs. I watched the children. And after the show, I witnessed the looks of wonder on the children's faces as they came to shake Bo Beep's hand.

p.s. The ingredients' mouths opened and closed! The moon's eyes blinked!

Paper Artistry

Several of my artistic friends create their artwork or work in their journals with cut paper. One, Lauren Stringer, has become quite adept at folding paper (after working on the artwork for Fold Me a Poem). My interest in their work and my basic attempts at trying both led to my eagerness to see the Paper Artistry exhibit at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum when I was "home" last weekend. 

I was astonished by the things humans created with single sheets of paper...the human brain (enlarge to see the humorous title of this piece), life-like coral, fairies, fish, incredible insects. Humans have also been investigating the folds necessary to create various things and using the technology to create medical devices and other mechanical items. The moose was folded from a single sheet, and the colorful diagram on the wall behind it is actually the folding pattern of it!

Should this exhibit come your way, take the time to view and appreciate it!

Authors' Notes

I love getting to the end of a book and reading the author's notes. Discovering tidbits about the writing process, those who helped shape the story, the facts and the fiction, and the things the author really wanted to share through the writing make books even more interesting for me. Such was the case this week with Kirby Larson's notes about HATTIE EVER AFTER. Set in 1919, it follows Hattie from Great Falls (where she has gone after failing to save her uncle's claim) to San Francisco (with the Venturing Varietals).

"When I left Hattie at the end of Hattie Big Sky, I had no intention of writing another book about her." p.225

Most author friends seems to feel that way about their books and characters, but I was glad to read about how she thought Hattie should do one thing and how the character had other ideas.

"A chance encounter with an article about love tokens fashioned from old coins (learn more at lovetokensociety.org) paved the way for Ruby Danvers and a delicious dilemma for Hattie." p. 226

I loved the way she wove that into the story regarding Uncle Chester, the man from whom Hattie inherited the Montana farm.

"One of the reasons I am drawn to writing historical fiction is that it can help us understand ourselves in the here and now. To be fair, I should say it helps me understand myself in the here and now." p. 229

In those lines she summed up my love for historical fiction. I sometimes wish I could experience time travel.

"Yes, I did a copious amount of research for this book. But my efforts were fueled by the desire to get this story - the story of seventeen-year-old orphan Hattie Inez Brooks trying to find her place in the world - absolutely right." p. 230

I think this story was told in absolutely the right way.