Poetry Friday -- Roundup is HERE!

A Warm Summer in San Francisco
by Carolyn Miller


Although I watched and waited for it every day,
somehow I missed it, the moment when everything reached
the peak of ripeness. It wasn't at the solstice; that was only
the time of the longest light. It was sometime after that, when
the plants had absorbed all that sun, had taken it into themselves
for food and swelled to the height of fullness. It was in July,
in a dizzy blaze of heat and fog, when on some nights
it was too hot to sleep...

(read the rest of the poem at The Writer's Almanac)

I know the feeling: 

"...I felt tears 

come into my eyes, absurdly, because I knew
that summer had peaked and was already passing
away."

I mark the passing of summer by the length of the vines in the baskets along High Street in Worthington,

and in the march of blooming things -- the Queen Anne's lace has joined the chicory, which will soon be replaced by goldenrod and tall purple ironweed; and I saw my first mimosa tree blooming this week. 

As the seasons turn and the pages on the calendar flip, let's take a minute to slow down and enjoy a variety of poetry. Leave your link in the comments and I'll round up the posts throughout the day. Happy Friday! Happy Poetry Friday!

*    *    *    *

Father Goose starts us off today with his Cozy Morning Cats. (Mine is watching the morning come to life from the windowsill!)

Kelly Polark returns to Poetry Friday (welcome back, Kelly!) with a poem inspired by a reunion.

Myra at Gathering Books shares a moving tribute to a Philippine poet.

Diane has a quartet of Poetry Friday posts: at Random Noodling, she's thinking about what gets in the way of writing poetry; she continues her poetic story of WWII at Kids of the Homefront Army; Kurious Kitty's Kurio Kabinet highlights a book of camping poems by Kristine O'Connell George; and at Kurious K's Kwotes, she has a quote about the efficient use of language in poetry.

David Elzey visits us from camp -- Vermont College of Fine Arts "camp" where he is a "counselor" this year. He created a writer's toolbox version of The Quartermaster's Store. (Here's a bit of the original for reference.)

Gregory K. at Gottabook has a poem after my procrastinatin' heart -- an original, of course!

Tanita reminds us of a great truth today: we are not our bodies. (Welcome back to PF, Cuz!)

At The Poem Farm, Amy has an original about a cherry tree (and a post that will make your mouth water!)

Steven Withrow's original story/riddle poem will get you thinking...and unthinking!

Madigan at Madigan Reads reviews Margarita Engle's newest verse novel, HURRICANE DANCERS. She's thinking possible Newbery contender!

Nancy shares one of her student's poems today -- about clouds.

Carlie wrote an original summer poem -- about the laundry on her clothesline!

Laura Salas links us in to Sylvia Vardell's video clips of the ALA Poetry Blast, and it's not too late to take part in this week's 15 Words or Less poetry.

Katie at Secrets & Sharing Soda reviews Hot Potato: Mealtime Rhymes.

Pentimento shares Bedtime Story For My Son by Peter Redgrove.

Tara is having a Chelsea Morning with Joni Mitchell today.

Maria at Teaching in the 21st Century advocates for Poetry Friday in the classroom. I second that!

The Write Sisters are on the same wavelength as Tanita (see above) with Homage to My Hips and the advice to get over it and "Just. Jump. In!!!!"

The Stenhouse Blog is sharing a poem about...SNOW?!?!?

Rasco From RIF tells about a very famous Swiss story (told in verse)...that I've never heard about until now!

Elaine is toasting marshmallows over at Wild Rose Reader today! YUM!!

At Blue Rose Girls, Elaine shares an original poem about swimming that doesn't require baring one's "mighty hips" (see The Write Sisters, above) or otherwise worrying about body image (see Tanita's post way up above).

Tricia has a poem for her mom.

Tabatha pops in from her blog vacation with a bit of Harry Potter-ness.

Janet highlights MIRROR MIRROR by Marilyn Singer.

Heidi's forgiven her lateness -- she took the whole family to the midnight showing of HP 7.2 last night. Her post is a meditation on incantations -- one in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Professor McGonagall's in HP.

And something that feels like saving the best for last -- Karissa, at the Iris Chronicles, introduces us to the poet Pamela Johnson Parker, who "finds so many connections between literature, art, poetry, and life. If you are a Wizard of Oz fan, you will enjoy this poem."

SIDEKICKS

Sidekicks by Dan Santant
Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

Here's another great stand-alone graphic novel that will be a welcome addition to my classroom library.

This is the story of an aging superhero, Captain Amazing, who's going to audition for a new sidekick. (Captain Amazing lives in Metro City, where he belongs to the Society of Superheroes. It's a little like the Imagine Nation in THE ACCIDENTAL HERO.)

This is also the story of the faithfulness of pets. Captain Amazing's dog (Roscoe), hamster (Fluffy), chameleon (Shifty), and his cat (Manny), all have super powers of their own and all are all willing to do whatever it takes to help/cover for Captain Amazing.

The contrasting background in this graphic novel is used mostly for nighttime scenes, but there is one sequence in sepia that is a flashback. It will be interesting to introduce my fourth graders to another way color change in the background is used (most often it denotes dream sequences).

Peanut allergies have an important part in this story. I'm thinking that there are plenty of kids out there who will be heartened by the fact that even a superhero can have a peanut allergy. (Think kryptonite...)

POSTCARDS FROM CAMP by Simms Taback

I am a huge Simms Taback fan.  I love so many of his books-his art always draws me in.  JOSEPH HAD A LITTLE OVERCOAT is the one that seems most loved by children and I can see why.



So, I was thrilled to see a new book by Simms Taback this is a little different from his others--POSTCARDS FROM CAMP.

This is a book told in postcards between a father and a son.  The son, Michael, is at camp and is not quite enjoying himself (he HATES it!) and the father is providing the encouragement he needs to stick it out.  The book is hysterical and I think this is one that older elementary students will enjoy.  The postcards (and a few letters enclosed in envelopes) get more complex as the book goes on. The actual front of the postcards are hysterical in themselves (a few Michael has created himself) and they each tell their own story.  Michael's father's postcards seem to give different messages to his son.  The letters from Michael are often pleading, often relaying terrible camp stories while the letters from his father often look naively on the bright side.

This book has so much potential. Ever since THE JOLLY POSTMAN was published years ago, there have been lots of books filled with letters. But they never quite meet my expectations.  Until this one.  The storyline is fun. The text and illustrations definitely work together and I can see kids spending lots of time reading and rereading these postcards.  In terms of minilesson work, this would be a great book to use with strategy work--so much reading between the lines is needed to understand what is really happening!

This may be my new favorite Simms Taback book!

GRIN AND BEAR IT by Leo Landry

When I saw reviews of GRIN AND BEAR IT by Leo Landry on GoodReads, I was expecting a picture book. So, when it arrived, I was excited to see that it was an early chapter book instead. It is a short chapter book--48 pages and 7 chapters.  Each page has a colorful illustration and most of the illustrations provide good picture support for the text.  Most pages have about 1/2 page or less of text.

Bear is the main character in the book and he is a comedian. He writes great jokes.  But he is a little shy. He so wants to tell jokes and make his friends laugh, and the jokes are pretty amusing. Bear practices and practices but when he finally has the chance to be on stage with his friends in the audience, he gets stage fright.  He is very upset and runs off but things turn out in the end in a happy and surprising way.

I can see 7 and 8 year-olds LOVING this book.  Bear writes and practices new jokes throughout the book, so those jokes that crack 7 and 8 year-olds up, are woven throughout the story. Bear's jokes seem to have nailed that second grade humor so well!

This seems to be a great fit for students moving beyond Henry and Mudge--there are lots more words per page, the phrasing support is not there in the way the text is set up on the page and the storyline and vocabulary are more complex.  I see this as a book for kids who are ready to get started on chapter books that take more than one day to read, but who do not yet have the stamina to stick with longer series books.  This one is appropriate for younger readers who are ready for chapter books. It would also make a fun read aloud!

Playing With Words--A Picture Book With Fun Plurals!

I was determined not to buy a book last week when I popped into a bookstore before meeting a friend for dinner. But I could not resist adding one more book to my Word Play collection.  One Foot, Two Feet:  An EXCEPTIONal Counting Book by Peter Maloney and Felicia Zekauskas is a counting book that celebrates irregular plural nouns.

Each number is introduced with a single object--such as "One Foot".   The illustration of a single foot shows through a cut-out frame in the page.  When the reader turns the page, he/she realizes that only part of the illustration has been visible and the one object turns into a group of objects--such as "Two Feet".  The book works its way from 1-10 (and then a billion:-) starting back at one for each new object.

Readers are introduced to words like mouse and mice, ox and oxen, octopus and octopi and more.

This book can be enjoyed in so many ways.  Without even thinking about the irregular plurals, this is a fun counting book for young children.  The numbers, the groups, and the illustrations make it a great concept book.  But the irregular plurals make it very unique.  I think this one will be a hit for so many reasons:-)

BAD ISLAND

Bad Island

by Doug TenNapel

Graphix/Scholastic, 2011

review copy provided by the publisher

In the same way that it's hard to find stand-alone novels for the die-hard series reader, it's hard to find stand-alone graphic novels for the graphic novel series reader. In my 4th grade classroom, I work with series readers of all kinds to venture into non-series books. One is not better than the other, it's just that they each take some very different reading strategies.

Kids will be drawn to Bad Island by the monsters and the fight scenes and the sight gags, but it's a pretty complicated story that I will want to make sure I conference with readers about when they've read it or are reading it.

I will want to know what they think of the characters and the way they change or don't change. This is the story of a dysfunctional family that goes on a sailing trip that only the dad wants to do. They get shipwrecked in a storm on an island that turns out to be a monster that was exiled from another world long ago. The dad and the brother in this story change and grow in satisfying ways, but the mother's character is pretty flat, and the little sister is just plain annoying and weird all the way through.

Readers need to know how to attend to the back-story of the monster and how he came to be an island in a different world. This other story is told on pages with a tan background, so readers of BabyMouse who know that the dream sequences are always in pink should be able to make that connection. But readers also need to be able to put together the clues from the back-story with clues from the family's story to figure out how the two connect.

As always, reading a graphic novel is way more than just looking at pictures. If you don't often read graphic novels, but your students do, you need to make a point read some and think about the strategies you are using as a reader, and the ways you can teach into the reading your students (sometimes/often) love best.

Check out Adventures in Graphica by Terry Thompson for more ways to use graphic novels in your reading workshop.

Fuse #8's review here.
Review from HighLow Comics here.

Poetry Friday -- Seeing Instead of Just Looking

To His Piano

by Howard Nemerov

Old friend, patient of error as of accuracy,
Ready to think the fingerings of thought,
You but a scant year older than I am
.

.

.

To see you standing there for six decades
Containing chopsticks, Fur Elise, and
The Art of Fugue in your burnished rosewood box,
As well as all those years of silence and
The stumbling beginnings the children made

.

.

.

(the whole poem is at The Writer's Almanac)

Men Throwing Bricks
by Michael Chitwood

The one on the ground lofts two at a time
with just the right lift for them to finish
their rise as the one on the scaffold turns
to accept them like a gift and place them
on the growing stack. They chime slightly
on the catch. You'd have to do this daily,
morning and afternoon, not to marvel.

(this poem can be found at The Writer's Almanac)

There is such a beauty in the ordinariness of life -- the things around us that we sometimes look at without seeing, but which hold so much meaning inside our memories -- watching others do hard work with ease and grace (or finding those moments of ease and grace in one's own work).

Ordinary: the screen door to the back yard of my childhood home. And yet, when I look at that picture, I hear the sound of the door handle, and feel the lush grass on my bare feet, the heat of the morning sun on the patio.

Elaine has today's Poetry Friday roundup at Wild Rose Reader.

Detective Blue

Detective Blue
by Steve Metzger
illustrated by Ted Arnold
Orchard Books/Scholastic, July 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

You be the detective! There are 24 Mother Goose rhymes hidden in the story and pictures of this hard-boiled detective story (which comes in the form of a graphic novel/picture book mash up).

Detective Blue, whose horn-blowing and cow-tending have been left in his past, makes short work of the crimes that come his way -- the dish running away with the spoon, Mary's lamb trying to sneak into school wearing a disguise. Then Jack Sprat comes running down the street yelling (not because someone offered him a fatty sandwich), "Miss Muffet is missing! Miss Muffet is missing!" and Detective Blue is on the case. He follows clues that take him from Little Bo Peep to Humpty Dumpty to Jack's Corner Pie Shop. Never fear, there's a fairy tale ending. (Literally.)

I can't wait to share this book with kids! It's a fun story with kid-sized literary allusions. It's got Ted Arnold's Fly Guy-style illustrations. It's a great (quick) model of the conventions of the mystery genre. It's a great (big-enough-to-share-with-a-group) model of the conventions of graphic novels. And there's that checklist of 24 Mother Goose rhymes that will pull kids back into the story until they find them all.

If you buy one book this summer/week, this should be the one.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD SING-ALONG by Nina Crews

I love having a large poetry and song book collection and I am always looking for poetry/song books that span grade levels.  I think THE NEIGHBORHOOD SING-ALONG by Nina Crews will be one of those books that kids of all ages will love.

This book is filled with classic songs such as "Take Me Out to the Ball Game!", "Do Your Ears Hang Low?", and "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt".  Each is place on a page with photos of small children out and about in the neighborhood.  The children in the photos are young--which will invite young children into this book.  But I don't think the young children will keep older kids from enjoying sharing these songs together.  Although there is no accompanying CD or site for the songs, I think most of the songs will be readily available to kids in some format.

I have lots of song books in my library and classroom collections. Many are new versions of old songs. It is nice to have a book that might give kids access to the original words/versions to many songs they may be familiar with.  I can't wait to share this one with kids.

ARE YOU AWAKE? by Sophie Blackall

I am a huge fan of Sophie Blackall. I fell in love with her work when I first read
MEET THE WILD BOARS and was thrilled to see her illustrations in the IVY AND BEAN series.    ARE YOU AWAKE? is my new favorite--written and illustrated by Sophie Blackall.

This is a small book-the size matches the tiny child on the front cover.  A small, sweet book.  The story is collection of questions--question that a little boy asks his mother in the middle of the night.  His first question, of course, is, "Are you awake?"

The story follows along the conversation between a very wide-awake child and his not-so-awake mother.  The child is full of why questions and the mother patiently answers every one.

There is lots to love about this little book.  The questions that the little boy asks are so genuine and true. Parents and children will all be able to remember a time when a child woke up far too early and wanted to chat.  The illustrations show the love and understanding of the relationship between mother and child and celebrates the curiosity of childhood.

This book would make a fun read aloud as well as an interesting text to study as a writing mentor.  I can't imagine anyone not falling in love with this book immediately.