Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

#PoemPairs

 

Birds: Explore their Extraordinary World
by Miranda Krestovnikoff 
illustrated by Angela Harding
Bloomsbury, 2020
review copy provided by the publisher (thanks!)

FIRST THE PICTURE BOOK
This is a gorgeous oversized nonfiction picture book. Illustrated with fine art linocuts, the information is grouped by types of birds, by notable characteristics (feathers, beaks and eyes), then by nests, migration, songs, and extremes (cold and urban living). Within each category there are big subcategories, and then each subcategory has short example sections. For example, in the category SEABIRDS are the two subcategories Seabirds of warmer waters and Seabirds of colder waters. In Seabirds of colder waters the reader learns about Gulls, Great black-backed gulls, Kittiwakes, and Gannets. This is a great book for browsing. You'll definitely be drawn in by the illustrations and then you'll find yourself perusing the bite-sized text chunks. The only thing that would make it better would be an index.

AND NOW THE POEMPAIR
Is it cheating to pair an entire book of poems? Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds, edited by Billy Collins and illustrated by David Allen Sibley is the most obvious pairing. Lots of fun poems plus gorgeous illustrations. 

If it's cheating to pair a whole book, I'll choose the poem Bird-Understander by Craig Arnold. This poem about someone who notices a bird trapped in the terminal of the airport; someone who notices the wrong in the world and who is desperate to help, to right the wrong. Birding requires close observation. There's much to learn about the natural history of birds if you bother to look closely, but just like in life, the closer you look, the more you are likely to see all kinds of problems that need work.

One of the problems connected to birding is racism. If you want to dig in more deeply, here is the story of Christian Cooper and a link to the (free) comic he wrote about what happened to him in Central Park when he was birding last spring.

A video to share with students features Corina Newsome, who broke stereotypes associated with becoming an environmentalist. She is a woman of color who grew up in an urban environment but became a zookeeper who has worked with turkey vultures as an Ambassador Animal Keeper at the Nashville Zoo.


Friday, August 16, 2019

Poetry Friday -- Trees




LOST AND FOUND


ACT 1

The hawks are whistling.
Every morning I listen,
wonder, imagine.

The nest, constructed
in a pignut hickory,
is hidden and safe.


ACT 2

Hawks in the city
remind us we are not far
from the wild. Ever.

Are they as aware
of me as I am of them?
I capture moments:

Whistling and screeing,
piercing dives through tree branches,
perching on our fence.


ACT 3

Every hope broken --
hickory falls in the storm.
Hawk home is destroyed.

Morning after. Sun.
Mournful hawks call tree to tree,
"Our babies...lost...gone."

I hear, on day two...
three hawks! Three means one survived!
Next day I see four!


ACT 4

Listen -- can you hear
hawks in your neighborhood trees?
Listen with your heart.

Wonder -- they survive:
paramount in the food chain,
tree top predators.

Imagine -- next year
another nest, another success...
perhaps in your oak.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2012



This "hawku" poem is about hawks. But it couldn't be about hawks if there weren't big trees in our part of the city, as well as plentiful chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, and possums. So much depends on the natural order of food chains and food webs, plants and animals, birds and insects, clean air and clean water. Let's care for and speak for our tiny corners of the planet. In this way, like a quilt, maybe we can keep the whole thing stitched together. Maybe.

Christie has this week's #fortheloveoftrees - themed Poetry Friday roundup at Wondering and Wandering.


Friday, August 17, 2018

Poetry Friday -- Bright Wings



Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds
edited by Billy Collins
illustrated by David Allen Sibley
Columbia University Press, 2010

So much to love about this little book. Poems collected by Billy Collins. (The man has good taste!) Illustrations by David Sibley. (Gorgeous.) Birds.

Here's one of my favorites -- The Crows Start Demanding Royalties by Lucia Perillo.

Click to enlarge.


Christy has the bird-themed Poetry Friday Roundup at Wondering and Wandering.




Friday, July 08, 2016

Poetry Friday -- Summer Poem Swap: BIRDS!



Hemingway and I love the mobile Joy Acey sent all the way from Hawaii! Her poem about birds can be found on the...birds!



BIRDS

soar      dive
wing in flight
sing to us
at morning's
first light

by Joy Acey


As a bonus, there was this iridescent beauty:


and this wish:


What a fun surprise to find in the towering stack of mail that accumulated for two and a half weeks while my brother and I were making this happen:




Katie has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at The Logonauts.




Monday, March 21, 2016

Two New Favorites



Every Day Birds
by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
illustrated by Dylan Metrano
Orchard Books (Scholastic), 2016

This book-length poem pays tribute to birds we see every day -- the birds so common that we should, as Amy reminds us, pay more attention and learn more about them.

Gorgeously illustrated in a unique cut-paper technique (watch a fascinating time-lapse video of him making a puffin here), this book has a natural flow that will make it a joy to read over and over again.




by Irene Latham
illustrated by Mique Moriuchi
Wordsong, 2016

I love farmers' markets! This lively book of poems pays tribute to the vast variety of foods you can find at the farmers' market. The foods are described through many senses -- tongues "buzz with pleasure" tasting honey, peach's "baby-fuzz/cheek" tickles a nose, and (my favorite) the watermelon looks like a galaxy, with the spit seeds the shooting stars.




Two new favorites, both celebrating down-to-earth joys in life -- the rich diversity of nature around us, and the delicious variety of fresh foods available from farm to table.




Friday, March 20, 2015

Poetry Friday -- Hatch


Wikimedia

SACRIFICE

How does
the buzzing
hummingbird
sit still enough to hatch

the two
(not three)
(size of a pea)
eggs that are in her batch?


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2015




Happy Spring!

This poem is my fifteenth (!!) in Heidi's MarCH CHallenge. You can browse through all my CH poems here.

If you're curious, the list of emotion words for my Poetry Month 2015 project PO-EMotions is here. Formal unveiling ceremony will be next week.

Catherine is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Reading to the Core.


Monday, November 17, 2014

Nature in Poetry




by David Elliott
illustrated by Becca Stadtlander
Candlewick Press, 2014

As I noted last Wednesday, J. Patrick Lewis' anthology title says it all: "Everything is a Poem." On Thursday, we looked at science in poetry. Today, the focus is on nature in poetry -- specifically, birds. Upcoming posts include history, biography and imagination in poetry.

My students and I have loved David Elliott's short, pithy poems in his collections On the Farm, In the Wild, and In the Sea. In this book, the essence of seventeen species of birds, from the ordinary sparrow to the exotic Japanese Crane pictured on the cover are captured in Elliott's words and Becca Stadtlander's gorgeous and evocative illustrations.

Sadly, last June, Holly Meade, David Elliott's illustrator for the other books in this series (On the Farm, In the Wild, In the Sea) died at age 56. David Elliott dedicates this book to her.