Praiseworthy Poems and Poetry Prompts

Strong children’s poetry books lend themselves to helping young people write their own poems. Here are three such books with writing prompt suggestions for each one.

BookSpeak! Poems about Books by Laura Purdie Salas

One of the best things about this collection is that it gives voice to books and parts of books in ways that will compel readers to think about words, books, and stories afresh. Josée Bisaillon’s illustrations support the creative, slightly funky feel of the book. For example, on a page with a poem called “Skywriting” we see black ink birds perched on a set of five gray wires (that could also be a musical staff, and why not?). Inkblots are scattered off from the birds, and each line of the poem below is written in a different font. The poem reads:

Line after line of inky black birds

forming the flocks that shift into words.

Page after page of tales winging by,

singing a story against a

white sky.

Which is just marvelous. The birds are letters, then flocks that become words, and stories that fly. Isn’t that what a story does, lifting our minds and hearts into flight with its words and images?

A couple of Salas’s poems touch philosophically on the idea that stories and characters aren’t alive unless the book is opened and read: “If a Tree Falls” and “A Character Pleads for His Life,” respectively. A journal speaks in the poem “Top Secret,” whose illustrations feature a flight of strange butterflies pouring out of a red diary with a small key. Note that most of the poems are written in first person: we hear from the index (“I can tell you the page number/of anything you’re looking for.”), the tree whose paper makes the book (“My limbs wrote on the sky with orange leaf pens.”), and the cliffhanger (“Please, author, write/a sequel fast!”).

One poem even veers off to make a book metaphor in another setting. Here’s “Written in Snow”:

Snowy pages,

steady track,

tiny footprints

dipped in black.

Through the blizzard

stories roam.

They tiptoe bravely

out, then home.

At least, the illustration suggests that the book imagery is used by real feet in real snow. But wait—isn’t the poem another metaphor like the one about birds? It works either way.

In Book Speak! we hear from the illustrations, from conflict, from the beach book, and from the books that party late at night in the bookstore. Perhaps best of all, we get in on an argument among the Beginning, the Middle, and the End about who is the most important. Maybe the End should be declared the winner because this collection really does finish off with a poem called “The End.” Although the poem invites us back to the beginning—and why not read this book again?

Laura Salas’s poems are light and easy, bright and breezy, yet at the same time they manage to be thought provoking. Or metacognitive, anyway. What is a story and why does it matter? What parts do the physical and literary components of a book play in our experience as readers?

Then again, you might as well just enjoy the poems. Though you may think a little differently about a book next time you read.

Poetry Prompts: What part of a book haven’t we heard from? Students can write their own mask poems giving voice to other book components, e.g., setting, the author's bio, or the title page. Or just the book itself—what does each student think a book will say? They might even give voices to specific books like Charlotte’s Web, The Lightning Thief, or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If those books could talk about themselves, what would they say?

Stardines Swim High Across the Sky by Jack Prelutsky

Jack Prelutsky is a bigger fan of word play than I am, and in recent books he has shown himself to be especially enamored of inventing portmanteau words or perhaps portmanteau creatures. This new collection presents 16 new “species” from the poet, all animals combined with a quality or habit—in many cases an irritating one. Here’s a list of the new creatures:

—Stardines

—Bluffaloes

—Swapitis

—Chormorants

—Fountain Lions

—Slobsters

—Plandas

—Jollyfish

—Sobcats

—Magpipes

—Tattlesnakes

—Braindeer

—The Gloose

—Panteaters

—Wedgehogs

—Bardvarks

And a few excerpts for your reference:

When other creatures are in bed,

STARDINES still twinkle overhead.

In silence, these nocturnal fish

Are set to grant the slightest wish.

CHORMORANTS are busy birds

That toil from sun to sun.

They labor over senseless chores

They’re certain must be done.

They work at this, they work at that,

And never think to ask

If they accomplish anything

With any pointless task.

TATTLESNAKE,

TATTLESNAKE,

Overly keen

To tattle repeatedly—

Truly you’re mean.

You’re nosy, annoying,

You’re venomous, vile.

You don’t mind your business,

We don’t like your style.

The most interesting poem to me is the last one, "Bardvarks," which I will include in its entirety:

BARDVARKS think they’re poets

And persist in writing rhyme.

Their words are uninspired

And a total waste of time.

But BARDVARKS do not know this,

So not only do they write

With unbearable pretension—

They incessantly recite.

BARDVARKS have no talent

For composing simple verse.

They don’t improve with practice

And in fact are getting worse.

Undeterred, they keep on writing

And reciting every day.

That’s why BARDVARKS are a problem—

You can’t make them go away.

One wonders if perhaps the poet is being ironic about his own work, but then, I’m more inclined to think that he is genuinely picturing certain people who are determined to write poetry but are too proud to make needed improvements to their work. A poor use of rhyme is a common problem. I will just tell you that the note I’ve put at the top of the new poetry collection I’m writing is “Less rhymey-rhymey thump thump.” Ahem.

At any rate, Pretlutsky’s poems are a lot of fun, though I think most kids will need a little help identifying some of the root animals and habits, particularly the wapiti and the cormorant. But I know they'll like finding out.

It’s important to note that Carin Berger’s artwork is utterly intriguing. Each creature is treated as an item in the catalog of a natural history museum. That is, each poem is printed on a card that is pinned to a board with four actual pins and given a neat label. The fonts on each card and label have the look of old card catalog listings. On or across the page is a specimen in a display box—but each specimen is created from mixed media and is in fact a nice mixture befitting the portmanteau word. For example, the stardines are cut from gold paper and look like fish crossed with shooting stars. These are physically elevated, shown soaring above a star map.

The nice thing about word play is that it is a challenge both creatively and intellectually. Children will no doubt enjoy reading this collection, but they should also take up the challenge for themselves.

Poetry Prompts: Of course students can come up with their own portmanteau creatures, poems, and artwork. They might want to apply the somewhat cautionary tone of some of the poems here. This task is more difficult than it might seem at first glance. I would suggest starting with a list of possible qualities or activities and then finding animal names to match rather than the other way round.

When Thunder Comes: Poems for Civil Rights Leaders by J. Patrick Lewis

The other two books are playful, but this book is grand in tone. This is not to say that the poems are inaccessible, and you will find a few flashes of humor. But each poem tells about a civil rights leader or leaders, so for the most part the poems have a dignity and weight that suit their topics.

Lewis uses a variety of poetic forms that I’ll admit I can’t identify at a glance—I did see a couple of sonnets, a villanelle, and a few free verse poems. Like the poetic forms, the artwork varies in that there are five different illustrators: Jim Burke, R. Gregory Christie, Tonoya Engel, John Parra, and Meilo So. This creates a rich feel to the series of page spreads. I especially like Meilo So's illustration for "The Auntie," Jim Burke's illustration for "The Slugger," Tonya Engel's illustration for "The Innocent," John Parra's illustration for "The Captive," and R. Gregory Christie's illustration for "The First."

The following is a complete list of poem titles and topics:

“The Activist”—Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s wife and civil rights activist

“The Auntie”—Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese pro-democracy activist under house arrest for many years; Nobel Peace Prize 1991

“The Slugger”—Josh Gibson, outstanding black Baseball Hall of Famer who played in the Negro Leagues before Jackie Robinson broke the race barrier

“The Innocent”—Mamie Carthan Till, mother of young murder victim Emmett Till, who was killed in Mississippi in a hate crime in 1955

“The Voice of the Voiceless”—Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, great leader for India’s independence and an advocate for women and the oppressed “untouchables” class

“The Captive”—Mitsuye Endo, a Japanese American woman interned during WWII

“Freedom Summer”—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, civil rights workers ambushed and murdered by the KKK in Mississippi in 1964

“The Journalist”—Helen Zia, Chinese American activist and journalist

“The Astronaut”—Ellison Onizuka, Japanese American (and first Asian American) astronaut who died in the Challenger accident

“The Long Walker”—Dennis James Banks, cofounder of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and Anishinabe political activist

“The Crusader”—Harvey Milk, first openly gay man elected to public office in California; assassinated in 1978

“Banker to the Poor”—Muhammad Yunus, Bangladeshi banker who launched the micro-loan program in Asia to help the very poor; Nobel Peace Prize 2006

“The Statesmen”—Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for nearly 30 years for being an activist in South Africa; eventually freed and became the country’s first black president; Nobel Peace Prize 1993

“The First”—Jackie Robinson, first African American playing baseball for the major leagues

“The Child”—Sylvia Mendez, who as a child helped win the case against segregated “Mexican schools” in California in 1946, paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education

These are amazing stories, and the poems have to be powerful to tell them. J. Patrick Lewis has done justice to this list of heroes—and make no mistake, these are heroes. The book ends with an author’s note telling more about each civil rights leader.

But I should give you some excerpts. In “The Auntie,” about imprisoned Burmese activist Aung San Suu Kyi, Lewis contrasts her imprisonment with the General and his life of ease:

When I refused food to protest my detention,

the new General stuffed himself on mangoes

and banana pudding.

When a cyclone flicked off the roof of my prison

like the Queen of Hearts, turning my life to shame

and candle, the General had a mole removed.

Lewis’s poem about Gandhi focuses on his work in behalf of the outcast “untouchables.” The poem concludes majestically:

For we are not the ones to say

What will erode and what endure,

Where the iron, where the clay,

Who the foul and who the pure.

And here are the last few stanzas of Lewis’s poem, “The Child”:

Aunt Sally took her there once.

Eyes sharp as icepicks pierced

the windowpanes as if seeing

a Mexican for the first time.

Every door was locked with a

secret combination of frowns.

How can anyone ever get in?

Sylvia asked. Someone must know

who has the right key…

She looked up at her mother.

Maybe me?

These poems will help young readers find the key to becoming people who really can change the world. They will show them what true heroes are like.

Poetry Prompts: Students can find out about other activists and write poems about them. Or they can learn more about these heroes and write new poems about different aspects of their lives. They could also try the different poetry forms from the collection. Or they could write poems about their own reactions to the collection, or just poems about what it means to be a hero.

Note: In general, I recommend having students write in free or blank verse rather than in rhyme. Rhyme tends to distract young writers from what they would like to say and is easy to botch (see note about Prelutsky poem above). It's more productive to help young writers focus on strong metaphors, nouns, verbs, and, in the case of biographical poems, incidents than on rhyme.

Bleahhh

I've got that evil cold that's been making the rounds. Back next week.

New Year’s Resolutions: Middle Grade Fiction

There’s no way around it—realistic fiction for the middle grade reader is likely to have a message of some kind. It’s even likely to be a so-called “problem novel.” And, in a Newbery contender kind of way, it might just feature a troubled child of about 10, often left in a small Southern town with a bunch of colorful characters. Think coming-of-age story.

Of course, this doesn’t mean such books aren’t good. In fact, the five I’m going to introduce today are all very good reads. It’s also true that other types of books, such as fantasy, have messages. I'm guessing there’s no such thing as a book without some kind of message!

Having come full circle, then, I’ll talk about excellent middle grade reads and the New Year's resolutions they might suggest. Three of the books are entirely realistic; the other two have elements of magical realism.

Almost Home by Joan Bauer

I like this author’s books very much, so I was happy to read her latest. Sugar Mae Cole is trying to keep it together, but life is falling apart for her and her mother—with no help from Sugar’s unreliable, mostly-absent father, who has a gambling addiction. Sugar’s mother is sweet, but starts to lose it when she and Sugar are evicted. Pretty soon the two of them are in Chicago, homeless.

Sugar has a lovely if slightly unusual support system. Even after she leaves town, her English teacher Mr. Bennett is there for her. “E-mail me,” he says, and eventually she does. Then Sugar finds a frightened puppy and manages to keep it even when she gets dropped into the foster care system. A group home is rough, but she ends up with a couple who are kind to her. This doesn’t go over well with her mother, who is still in a shelter, still struggling. Sugar handles her divided loyalties as best she can. She also helps her fearful puppy, too, reassuring herself at the same time. Slowly, Sugar's life takes on a new shape.

Bauer may be prone to overly tidy endings, but I’m good with that. I believe a children’s book should end on a note of hope—as long as it’s not sicky-sweet. Sugar’s life has improved by the last page, but it’s still not going to be an easy road. Sugar is a thoroughly likable character, and I’m rooting for her all the way into that fictional future of hers. Bauer’s portrait of homelessness may end more happily than most such scenarios in the lives of actual children, but it will certainly clue young readers in to how hard it is to be poor and adrift. That kind of empathy will serve them well in this life where so many people are in difficult situations.

Resolution: Awful as life may get, there are good people (and dogs) in this world. I will reach out to them.

Note: Here’s my review of Close to Famous, the book Bauer wrote before this one.

A Dog Called Homeless by Sarah Lean

By the time you finish this book, you may forget you are reading a story with magical realism in it, which is fine. The most important thing about Cally Fisher is that her mother just died and her father is too grief-stricken to do much of anything for his daughter. When Cally sees her dead mother at the cemetery, her father tells her to stop talking about it and her aunt explains that it’s wishful thinking. But then Cally sees her mother again. And again.

She sees a dog with her mother, too, a friendly wolfhound that she eventually names Homeless. The dog seems connected to her mother, but he is connected to a homeless man named Jed as well. Cally’s father doesn’t want her to have anything to do with the dog or the man, but they keep appearing in Cally’s life.

Cally’s best friend at school dumps her just as she and her father and brother move into an apartment. Starting with a fund-raising challenge at school to go all day without talking, Cally decides not to talk anymore at all. Still, she makes friends with Sam, the boy downstairs who apparently has cerebral palsy and is blind and mostly deaf. Cally is diligent and kind-hearted in her efforts to be a true friend to Sam. Meanwhile, her family finally notices that Cally has stopped talking.

This book is a little heavy-handed with its message and its plot points, but I still liked it. Cally is an interesting character in that she seems to be a little hyperactive, which makes school and social situations harder for her. Her silence is out of character, but it says what no one seems to be hearing otherwise: “Hey, I’m really upset here!” As the book ends, the dog takes on a whole new meaning for Cally and her family, wrapping things up nicely.

I will just add that some would argue that Cally imagined seeing her mother, but the book as a whole seems to say otherwise. I’m in with the magical realism (or maybe faith) on that one.

Resolution: If no one’s listening, I’ll try being quiet and doing something for someone who needs my help.

Fourmile by Watt Key

I will warn you up front that this is a gritty book, pretty violent by MG standards. The author’s website lists it as “YA/9 and up.” That may sound a little conflicted, but I do think Fourmile

might be a good fit for some 5^th through 8^th graders as well as for readers in their teens, especially boys. Southern writer Key has written two other books with strong male characters in tough situations: Alabama Moon and Dirt Road Home. All three include a certain amount of violence, though all three end on a note of realistic hope. (I’m particularly fond of Alabama Moon.)

Fourmile is the story of a 12-year-old boy named Foster whose dad has died recently. His mother is about to lose the farm and is dating an unpleasant man named Dax. Foster rightly dislikes Dax and tries to protect himself, his mother, and his dog Joe as best he can—which isn’t much. When a Shane-like character comes walking up the road with his backpack and a dog, Foster instantly latches onto him, and the man, Gary, stays a while doing work on the farm. Naturally, Dax and Gary clash. Gary’s secret past comes back to haunt him, but not before Gary fights back against Dax and his thuggish friends to protect Foster and his mom.

Fourmile is a heart-wrenching story that is ultimately about fathers and father figures, good and bad. Gary can’t solve Foster’s problems or his mother’s—Gary can’t even solve his own. But he can give Foster and his mother a little courage for grabbing hold of the future.

Watt Key is good at writing adventure-suspense novels for boys, but these books are character driven. Key is good at showing just how hard it is to be human. And at showing how people can keep going just the same. There's a reason this book got three starred reviews!

Resolution: I can't make exactly the life I want, but I will still make a life for myself.

The Second Life of Abigail Walker by Frances O’Roark Dowell

When sixth grader Abigail Walker stands up to her mean little group of friends at school, they turn on her. She has been trying to be “the most medium of the medium girls,” but it’s not working anymore. The girls especially tease her about her weight. Her own father gives her a hard time about it. But, like she tells herself, she’s only 17 pounds heavier than her friends. Is that so terrible?

Abby slowly makes new friends with a couple of school outcasts, who are very nice, but her former “friends” won’t leave her alone. Meanwhile, her mother makes things harder by insisting that everything be lovely and positive at all times. This insistent Panglossian approach winds up exposing Abby to more bullying.

There are new events in Abby’s life, however. She has been nipped by a strange fox and has found something else to think about after crossing a stream, led by a dog. Here’s where the magical realism comes in. Well, in some ways things on the other side of the stream are ordinary. Abby gets to know a boy named Anders, along with his grandmother and his troubled father. Anders’ father is suffering from post-traumatic stress after serving in Iraq.

The fox, however, is magic. Or more properly, mythic. Short chapters here and there in the book are told from the fox’s perspective. The fox follows stories, winding in and out of people’s lives, and you would think she would remain unscathed. But she has been hurt by recent events in a far-off land, and she is not the same, after all. I realize some readers will be put off by these interludes and by the fox’s brief interactions with the other characters, but what is Dowell doing with all this? Bullying is like war, maybe. Human hurt and human suffering for no real reason. And the damage done is incalculable, even epic. It is deserving of stories, of symbols and heroes. Something like that.

This book talks about bullying in unusual and effective ways. Ask yourself, for example, in what way Abby’s parents are bullying her. Abby doesn’t think of this, precisely. Her focus is mostly on her struggles with the other girls. In one amazing passage, Anders asks Abby what the two mean girls can actually do to her. She thinks for a bit about how to explain it, then says, “They can kill you… Only, other people don’t know that you’re dead. Only you know, on the inside.”

This isn’t just a book about bullying; it’s about hope. It’s about looking at the bigger picture and becoming a bigger person. Abby’s second life isn’t just about crossing the stream. It's about helping someone with worse troubles than hers. It’s about growing into a life that isn’t medium size at all.

The Second Life of Abigail Walker is an odd little book. It is also one of my favorite books of 2012.

Resolution: I will not let petty people define and limit me.

Note: Gotta hand it to the Brits. The UK cover shows a girl who’s a little overweight and is facing the viewer with hope and moxie. But the U.S. cover gives us a girl who doesn’t look the least bit overweight. She is shown mostly from the back, staring away from the viewer. She is blandly pretty and very much sans moxie. I swear, one of these days I’m going to move to London!

Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage

This book has been getting some Newbery talk, so I put it on my To Read list and finally got to it. Did I mention books about girls getting dumped in small Southern towns full of colorful characters? Yep, this one embodies that scenario. But let’s move past that and consider Turnage’s work on its own merits.

Mo (Moses) LoBeau washed up in a little town in North Carolina when she was still a baby during a terrible hurricane. A man most people just call the Colonel rescued her, and now he and Miss Lana are basically her parents. Only, the Colonel wound up with amnesia during the storm, so he doesn’t know about his past. As for Mo, she wonders and wonders about her “Upstream Mother.” The people of Tupelo Landing help her drop messages in bottles farther up the river for her missing mother to find.

But that’s not how the book begins. It starts like this:

Trouble cruised into Tupelo Landing at exactly seven minutes past noon on Wednesday, the third of June, flashing a gold badge and driving a Chevy Impala the color of dirt. Almost before the dust had settled, Mr. Jesse turned up dead and life in Tupelo Landing turned upside down.

Pretty soon Mo has inserted herself and her buddy Dale into a murder investigation. She is also curious about why Detective Joe Starr seems fixated on finding out the Colonel’s secrets. Plus Dale has a guilty secret of his own, though it means he might be able to help with the investigation.

The plot swirls and twirls around Mo, who doesn’t stop moving herself. As you can probably tell from the pass above, Mo has a bright and strong voice, which is what really makes the story. Three Times Lucky is a vivid, fast-paced read that manages to address questions like “What is family?” while solving more than one mystery. All with the help of Moses LoBeau, naturally.

Resolution: I will stick my nose in whenever possible and find out what's really going on.

Now, if none of these resolutions work for you, try this one on for size: This year I will read some very good books!

Note for Worried Parents: As mentioned above, Fourmile is decidedly violent and unsettling. That is, it is appropriate for older children and teens, but may be a little too rough for some parents. The violence is not constant, though a threatening mood hovers over most of the book and some sad, painful things happen. There is something ultimately hopeful and definitely human about the book, but it is not an easy read. 

A Christmas Song by Eleanor Farjeon

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been listening to Christmas music on the radio. And like me, you may wonder why, considering there are dozens of wonderful Christmas songs out there, radio stations seem to play the same 10 songs over and over—most notably Bing Crosby's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas." The only relief is that they might play 2–5 versions of each of those 10.

Who better to give us a new carol or at least different lyrics than British children’s poet and book writer Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965)? She wrote more than 30 books, opera librettos, plays, and masques. “The Shepherd and the King” is from her book of Christmas poems, Come Christmas, but I’m guessing it was first performed as a carol in one of her Christmas masques. It is currently available as sheet music on the Internet.

In 1955 Farjeon won a Carnegie Medal for her story collection, The Little Bookroom. (The Carnegie is the British equivalent to the Newbery in the United States.) In 1956 she was the very first winner of the international Hans Christian Andersen Award for her “lasting contribution to children’s literature.”

Children’s literature people tend to talk about Farjeon's book Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard, but my favorites are two fairy tale retellings, both of which started out as plays: The Glass Slipper (Cinderella) and The Silver Curlew (Rumpelstiltskin plus a nursery rhyme, “The Man in the Moon”).

Eleanor Farjeon’s most famous work is actually a poem now familiar as the song lyrics performed by Cat Stevens, “Morning Has Broken.” Today it is often sung as a Christian hymn.

And so I give you a very Merry Christmas, with a little help from Eleanor Farjeon!

  

The Shepherd and The King

The Shepherd and the King,

The Angel and the Ass,

They heard Sweet Mary sing,

When her joy was come to pass.

They heard Sweet Mary sing

To the Baby on her knee.

Sing again Sweet Mary,

And we will sing with thee!

Earth, bear a berry!


Heaven, bear a light!


Man, make you merry


On Christmas Night.

The Oxen in the stall,


The Sheep upon the hill,


They are waking all


To hear Sweet Mary still.


The Baby is a Child,


And the Child is running free.


Sing again Sweet Mary,


And we will sing with thee!

Earth, bear a berry!


Heaven, bear a light!


Man, make you merry


On Christmas Night.

The People in the land,


So many million strong,


All silently do stand


To hear Sweet Mary's song.


The Child He is a man,


And the man hangs on a tree.


Sing again Sweet Mary,


And we will sing with thee!

Earth, bear a berry!


Heaven, bear a light!


Man, make you merry


On Christmas Night.

The Stars that are so old,


The Grass that is so young,


They listen in the cold


To hear Sweet Mary's Tongue.


The Man's the Son of God,


And in heaven walketh He.


Sing again Sweet Mary,


And we will sing with thee!

Earth, bear a berry!


Heaven, bear a light!


Man, make you merry


On Christmas Night.

—Eleanor Farjeon, from Come Christmas (1927)


Note: Illustration is by French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Poetry Friday: Animals Eat Sunlight

Poet Heidi Mordhorst of My Juicy Little Universe is hosting Poetry Friday today, and she asked us to write poems about "lighting the dark" by way of celebrating the Winter Solstice with her and her family. Here's my poem:

Animals Eat Sunlight

“Animals eat sunlight,” I tell my students.

They don’t believe me. I explain how light

is caught by the green nets of leaves

and eaten by cows that become fast food

hamburgers and how we eat leaves in salads—

bowls of sunlight adorned with ranch dressing

and croutons. “Sunlight is energy,” I say.

I don’t talk about the way the sun

has been worshipped for thousands of years

as a mighty golden god or the hope after winter.

I don’t tell them how my heart lifts

with each sunrise. How it astonishes me

that day is somehow here again.

I don’t speak of my fierce love for the star

first graders draw in the upper corners

of their pictures with yellow crayons,

that circle blessing the house with its chimney

and family, its row of red flowers

like smaller suns. At recess, I walk outside.

I do not look directly at the sun, deferential,

but I feel it touching my skin. I feel

like a tree, stretching my branches,

my green nets, my everything towards light.

—Kate Coombs, 2012

all rights reserved

For more poems and links, visit the Poetry Friday post at My Juicy Little Universe. Happy Solstice, Happy Holidays, Happy Season of Candlelight and Starlight!