Classroom Resource: Wordless News (and metaphors found in art)

Wordless News. If you don't subscribe and use this resource in your classroom, now's the time to start. Creator Maria Fabrizio has been away for a few months, busy with a newborn and a toddler, but she's back with an image at least once a week.

The images she creates are perfect for "notice and wonder." I noticed that the shadow was actually hands, and I wondered about the lines, but I didn't notice one key thing about the lines until I read the related article. I hadn't heard about this interactive art installation, so when I read the article, I had a huge WOW! moment. I'm saving this one to share with my students even though it will be old news in a couple of weeks. I want to open their eyes/minds to art as a response to current and historical events.

Earlier this week, at the Columbus Museum of Art, I saw this installation and had another WOW! moment:

What looked like a huge barrel balanced on a rope took on layers of deep meaning when I read the explanation outside the room:

We study the indigenous people of the Americas, including the effects of colonialism. So this image will be a great starting point for those studies, and another example of the way art can help us to think about our world.

Maira Kalman's Ah-Ha to Zig-Zag

Ah-Ha to Zig-Zag: 31 Objects from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

by Maira Kalman

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, 2014

My weekly email from Brain Pickings contained a very expensive Best Children's Books of 2014 list a couple of weeks ago.

I'm a sucker for ABC books, and I'm a sucker for Maira Kalman's whimsical illustrations, and I'm a sucker for multi-genre nonfiction. What could I do? I had to buy this book.

Published by the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, it is exactly what it says it is: "31 objects from the Cooper Hewitt..." Furthermore, we learn, "Maira Kalman went to the museum. She chose objects from the collection and made this book for you."

Don't expect a literal, one-to-one ABC. That's not Kalman's style. For instance, the dog on the cover is featured on the spread for E: "E. (Except for your dog) This is the cutest dog on Earth. With the cutest Eyebrows on Earth."

After Z comes O, for "Oops!" A letter was left out, but "Oh, well. We all make mistakes." After that, there are photographs of the actual objects with a bit of information about each (have fun counting and figuring out why there are more than 31 photographs), the story of how Nellie and Sally Hewitt came to collect these objects and create a museum, AND an invitation to readers to pay attention to the design of the objects in the world around them and then write to the museum with their suggestions for objects that might be included in a museum.

So. Much. Fun.

The Artist and the King by Julie Fortenberry

The Artist and the King
by Julie Fortenberry
Alazar Press, due out April 7, 2014
review copy provided by the author

Daphne is an artist, but her art -- an honest portrait of His Crabbiness -- does not please the king. Daphne's punishment is to wear the picture, rolled up, as a dunce cap, instead of her beloved red artist's beret.

Almost immediately upon donning the dunce cap, Daphne's Art kicks in. She begins to add decorations to customize the cap. "Soon she was getting compliments." And she began to sell the hats. They became all the rage.

Which enraged the king.

He banished all dunce cap wearers to the wilderness. Even his own daughter, who threw the extra cap she was carrying at his feet and walked with the others into the woods.

Daphne goes back to rescue the flung cap and discovers the king crying. They share a moment of apology and self-realization, then discover that the cap was intended as a gift to the king from his daughter. Together they bring all the villagers back from the woods, and Daphne is given back her beret.

In the current (March/April 2014) issue of The HornBook, the final essay (Cadenza) is "Reading Picture Books 101" by Robin L. Smith. I'll walk you though her seven steps with The Artist and the King.

1. Look at the cover. The cover illustration of The Artist and the King lets us know it's a windy day. This is absolutely necessary for the plot development.

2. Take the paper jacket off and see whether the board cover is different. Nope.

3. Now examine the endpapers. Plain blue.

4. Peruse the title page. The story actually starts here (I love books that do this)! Daphne is painting a picture of His Crabbiness, and the villagers who are her audience are appreciating her art.

5. Read the book all the way through without reading the words. Pay attention to page turns, white space, and pacing. This is a fascinating way to read a picture book -- thinking about the design process, movement in the illustrations, artistic decisions made by the illustrator. The story absolutely is told coherently through the pictures in this book!

6. Read the book with the words. Think about how the words and pictures work together. There are two places where the words in the illustrations interact with the words in the story. I might not have noticed that if not for this list of steps! When read on its own, the text has a nice flow, with long and short sentences and accessible vocabulary peppered with words perfectly chosen for the story: regal, mockery, banished.

7. Go back and check every gutter. Now that's something I'm SURE I've never done, but how smart to make sure that the art matches up across the gutter and that nothing important gets lost there where the left page turns into the right. In The Artist and the King, when the gutter is not used to divide the pages into separate scenes, there is very intentional movement from one page to the other across the gutter. Fascinating!



These seven simple steps make me want to dive into a study of picture books with my students! One savvy reader noted recently that hardly anyone reads from the picture book shelf in my classroom. This may be a way to get some buy-in from fifth graders who are "too cool" for picture books!

The Artist and the King will definitely have a place in my classroom library, as well as in a study of picture books, and in our discussions about theme. Three cheers for a character who stays true to her passion, her art, and who helps the unfair and crabby king to soften up and be more accepting!

Poetry Friday: Poems for a Book Character

Photo by Mary Lee Hahn. May be used with attribution.

I still haven't quite recovered from reading The Goldfinch. (My gobstopped review is here.)

This is a poem the main character, Theo, would appreciate. It fits with his world view. Mine, too, on the days when I choose not to think about the truth of our existence here.

Fire
by Wyatt Townley

It's only the body
It's only a hip joint
It's just a bulging disc
It's only weather
It's only your heart
It's a shoulder who needs it
This happens all the time
It's very common
It's unusual
For people your age
For people your age
You're in great shape
Remarkable shape
It's nothing you did
The main thing is
It's temporary
It's only a doll
In a house that's burning

But Theo would also like this one, knowing, as he did, the power of art to change our lives.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell

We cannot know his legendary head 

with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso 

is still suffused with brilliance from inside, 

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, 

gleams in all its power. Otherwise 

the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could 

a smile run through the placid hips and thighs 

to that dark center where procreation flared. 

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced 

beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders 

and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur: 

would not, from all the borders of itself, 

burst like a star: for here there is no place 

that does not see you. You must change your life.

Anastasia has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week via Poet! Poet!, but on Pinterest HERE.

20 Ways to Draw a Tree by Eloise Renouf

It is that time of summer when I am thinking hard about those first messages I want to give my new students about the classroom they'll be entering.  Peter Johnston's words have lived with me for years and as I think about routines and classroom organization, I am always thinking about the subtle messages these things in schools give to our young children. So, I was thrilled to discover a new book called 20 Ways to Draw a Tree and 44 Other Nifty Things from Nature: A Sketchbook for Artists, Designers, and Doodlers. I was immediately drawn to the title and checked it out.  I love so much about this book and am thrilled that there are others in the series.

I am not an artist and I don't actually pay much attention to visuals. I've only started to a little bit recently as the world is made up of more visuals.  So this book is all the more fascinating to me. I guess I never realized how many different ways there are to draw a tree or a leaf or a bird or a flower.

So, back to why I bought this book. I want my students to get the message right away that there are lots of ways to do things. That there are not "right' and "wrong" answers and that there are so many ways to problem solve and to think about things. So many ways to approach things. So many amazing ways to see something and so many ways to think about something. And I think this book gives that message.   Although this book is designed to help you experiment with drawing (and I imagine it will invite lots of kids to do just that), it will also give the messages I want them to get when they walk into our classroom.

I'm not quite sure how I'll use the book--whether I'll figure out a way to make it some sort of invitational wall display or whether we'll do some playing with it the first few days of school or what. But I know it will serve some purpose during those first few important weeks of school. And I can see kids going back to it throughout the year and just looking at it. There is so much to see. Such an amazing book!

Thought for the Day

ART IS A GUARANTY OF SANITY
Phoenix Convention Center