Spine Label Poetry

Instead of posting a favorite poetry book, I thought it would be fun to encourage you all to write your own poems. How? By using the spines of books you have at your house. Anything will do. Visit 100 Scope Notes for inspiration. 

Be wild and crazy, but most importantly just have a good time.
 

How do you do it? Just grab some books off your bookshelf and see if you can put together a poem. See what you can create. Take a picture and email it to me (lcapizzo (at) scarboroughlibrary(dot)org) and I'll post it on this blog.

Happy writing.

A Poke in the I, selected by Paul B. Janeczko

Concrete poetry are very, very different from regular poems because the visual appearance of the poem matches the subject. 

I

NEED

CONTACT

LENSES

like i need a poke in the eye

by John Hegley

Paul Janeczko is a poetry anthologist extraordinaire. He's also from Maine. He has put together a collection of poems using the concrete -- or shape-- appearance. A Poke in the Eye: a collection of concrete poems is a handsome collection with illustrations done by Chris Raschka, a Caldecott winner for illustrating the Hello, Goodbye Window. Raschka's abstract paintings lend a playfulness to these fun poems. Raschka says, "Concrete poetry is the yoga of words. Like feeling your breath and your bones, you begin to notice what words and sentences actually look like."

Pick this up to share with your family. You'll be glad you did.

Forget-Me-Nots: poems to learn by heart

I was made to memorize poems when I was in school, but, unfortunately, remember only one of them,  Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson, and then only the third stanza at that!

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
   Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
   Rode the six hundred.

 
Forget-Me-Nots: poems to learn by Heart, selected by former Children's Poet Laureate and National Book Award Winner, Mary Ann Hoberman, is a collection of poems suitable for memorizing. Poets include Robert Louis Stevenson, Ogden Nash, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Douglas Florian, and more.

Fog by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Next time you visit the Scarborough Public Library, ask Marilyn to recite a poem. She has a wealth of them

stored in her memory.

Valerie Worth

Valerie Worth (b.1933- d.1994) was the author of many poetry books for children. I have always loved the simplicity of Worth's free verse poems.

crows

when the high

snows lie worn

to rags along

the muddy furrows,

and the frozen

sky frays, dropping

gray and sodden

to the ground,

the sleek crows

appear, flying

low across the

threadbare meadow

to jeer at

winter's ruin

with their jubilant

Thaw! Thaw! Thaw!

Accompanying each poem is a pencil sketch by Natalie Babbitt, who is also an amazing author. Babbitt's images are perfect companions to the poems.

Worth's poetry encourages observation. You can see that in the poem back yard.

back yard

Sun in the back yard,

Grows lazy,

Dozing on the porch steps

All morning,

Getting up and nosing

About corners,

Gazing into an empty

Flowerpot,

Later easing over the grass

For a nap,

Unless

Someone hangs out the wash--

Which changes 

Everything to a rush and a clap

Of wet

Cloth, and fresh wind

And sun

Wide awake in the white sheets.

When reading this poem, it reminds me of lazy summer days; of gazing out and marking the time of day by where the sun is as it crosses the porch. I can even smell the freshness of the laundry after being hung outside all day, drying in the gentle breeze and warmed by the sunshine.

Check out all the small poems and fourteen more by Valerie Worth and share them with your children. 

From the stacks

 Sharing poems with your child helps children develop a love of language. Read more...
 
One book in our collection that is just right for introducing poems to your child is, Here's a Little Poem: a very first book of poetry, Ccollected by Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters; Illustrated by Poly Dumbar.

A.A. Milne, author of the beloved character Winnie-the-Pooh wrote some terrific poems.

Halfway Down by A.A. Milne
Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.

I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Celebrate National Poetry Month during April

Douglas Florian is just one of my favorite poets. His poems are witty and he frequently uses the natural world as his subject. Some titles include: Mammalabilia, Dinothesaurus, Insectlopedia, and many more. Florian is also an artist, so each book is illustrated by him. He incorporates elements of collage, watercolor, and gouache on a surface of primed paper bags. To learn more about Florian, visit his webpage.

In unBEElievables: honeybee poems and paintings takes readers through the life cycle of the honeybee. Added on each page is a scientific fact, making this a great book to share with children who want to learn more about how bees make honey.

Honey

So many blossoms!

So many flowers!

So much flying---

Hours and hours!

So much nectar

Needed to eat

So honey

All will end up sweet!

In the sidebar we learn that a colony of bees may visit more than a million flowers to make just one pound of honey.

Check out unBEElievables or other books by Florian. They are too good to miss.

What we are reading in our Book Group at Wentworth

Every Wednesday since January, Barbara Merritt, Scarborough School District head librarian for grades K-8, and I have co-hosted a book club held at Wentworth during lunch recess. The book clubs run 5 weeks and so far we've worked with 4th graders and today was our last time for grade 3.

When we met with the 4th graders, the book we read was The Dragon's Egg written by local author Sarah Thomson, who came and met with all the students at our final meeting. She was terrific and the children had ample time to ask her lots and lots of great questions.

The Third Graders just finished The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught her to Fly by Luis Sepulveda. An exciting adventure woven tightly around a strong environmental message, participants made a book trailer as their final project since we were not able to connect with the Sepulveda and ask if he was available to Skype with us. (He lives in Spain).

Do you know what a book trailer is? Similar to a movie trailer in format and
length, a book trailer promotes…a book. Making trailers takes some planning and lots of discussion. Students are asked to think about the book and pull out the most important parts. You don't want to tell too much and bore your audience, but you also want to keep them excited. As Mrs. Merritt explained, "You want to give just enough information so that when the trailer is over you can't wait to read the book!"

We would like to share our book trailers with you! If you want to see them, please stop in to the Wentworth Library and ask the staff to show them to you. The students did a great job.

Next week Barbara and I will begin meeting with Fifth Graders. We will be reading Rules by another local author Cynthia Lord.