MAY B- Caroline Starr Rose

Mavis Elizabeth Betterly (better known as May B.)
 is about twelve years old.

Growing up in a soddy 

on the plains of Kansas.

May wants to be a teacher

but is struggling to learn to read.

Her father hires her out

to Mr. and Mrs. Oblinger.
Drives her the fifteen miles
out onto the prairie
promises he will be back
to pick her up at Christmas…

A debut novel
told in verse
Would be great for a unit on
the Westward Movement
or life on the prairie.
Could be paired with
the Little House books
or Sarah Plain and Tall.

A quick and compelling read.

SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS- Laura Amy Schlitz

Ok, I'm just going to be honest. I did not expect to like this book. I thought SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS was fantasy, and I chose it as my #bookgapchallenge read for vacation. I thought it was fantasy, and it was, but just a little. It was really more Elizabethan fiction/mystery.

I started "reading" SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS on audiobook in the car. I'm not a big audiobook person,  (unless I'm going on a trip), but somehow, when I reserved this book, I accidentally reserved the audio version. When I discovered what I had done, I decided I might as well just take the audio version. That day, however, I also happened across the print version in the new books section of the library.

 The woman who reads SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS on the audiotape is a British actress, and she is really, really good. I'm not one of those people who can do different accents, and hearing her voice helped me get into the spirit of the book. I've long said that kids need to hear books read aloud, and I'm a huge advocate of "jumpstarting" kids by reading a chapter or two aloud, to help a reader who's struggling get the author's voice into their heads. I think that's exactly what Davina Nelson (I think that's her name) did for me with this book.

SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS is one of those books where the reader has to hold on to a lot of different pieces. The forward to the book is a section of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

And others came…Desires and Adorations,
Wingéd Persuasions, and veiled Destines,
Splendours and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations,
Of Hopes and Fears, and Twilight Fantasies …

And then the reader is taken to the bedroom of a very old, very ill woman, named Cassandra. Cassandra is a witch who has a powerful, and yet somehow evil,  fire opal necklace. From there, one travels to the streets of London in 1860, and meets Clara Wintermute, a wealthy young woman whose family has suffered a terrible loss in a cholera epidemic. Clara is celebrating her 12th birthday, and has invited a marionette troupe to perform at her party. The puppeteer, Gaspare Grisini, is assisted by two urchins, Lizzie Rose, who has lost her parents to cholera, and Parsefall, a rough little guy rescued from the workhouses of England. The night of her birthday party, Clara disappears. It's up to Lizzie Rose and Parsefall to discover where she has gone…

Schlitz does a masterful job of keeping the reader guessing. Where has Clara gone? Can Lizzie Rose and Parsefall rescue her? Is Cassandra good or evil? And what about Grisini? Who is he? And how are Cassandra and Grisini linked? What is the power of the necklace? This is a book where even a pretty sophisticated reader has to be on her toes, or she will miss something important.

I didn't expect to like this book. I'm really glad I challenged myself to read it, because I ended up loving it.

POETRY FRIDAY

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

It's the last Poetry Friday of 2012

and I'm honored to host 

from cold and snowy Denver.

Seems like it should be a time 

for deep profundity

or great levity

or the reviewing of resolutions.

Leave your poems, (deeply profound or otherwise) 

in the comments 

and I will round them up periodically 

throughout the day tomorrow.

"Questions Before Dark"

Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you?  Are the corners
sharper or rounded off?  Did you
live with death?  Make decisions
that quieted?  Find one clear word
that fit? 

Jeanne Lohmann

Read the rest of the poem here.

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 Mary Lee needs people to sign up to host the Poetry Friday Roundup in June 2013.  You can sign up here.

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Just spent a couple of hours compiling the morning's offerings. What gifts people have brought to us.

This time of year brings many celebrations of family and traditions…

·      Tara celebrates her season of family traditions with Mary Oliver’s “Poem of the One World.”

And Mary Oliver fans can read "I Asked Percy How I Should Live My Life" at Miss Erin's blog. 

·      Fellow Denverite Linda captures a joyful Christmas moment with her granddaughter at Teacherdance.

·      Elaine Magliaro dedicates her original poem, “Things to Do if You are a Book” to her granddaughter

·      At Inside the Dog, Steve Peterson honors his grandfather with an original poem, “The Measure of a Life.”

·      Margaret is writing a series of poems in response to Christmas cards her father has created for the last nine years. I loved “Out of Egypt” during Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life on Tuesday. Today Margaret gifts us with a triolet, “Songs of Angels.”

·      Matt Forest Esenwine honors his wife with a special poem and provides blog readers with some information about the history of haiku and tanka.

·      Joy bakes up a fortune cookie haiku, and a challenge to try writing one of your own.

Lori Ann Grover has an original holiday haiku here.

·      Margaret is writing a series of poems in response to Christmas cards her father has created for the last nine years. I loved “Out of Egypt” during Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life on Tuesday. Today Margaret gifts us with a triolet, “Songs of Angels.”

·      At Bald Ego, Charles Ghigna brings us not one, not two, not three, but seven original poems from his boyhood in the South. The vivid detail in these poems reminds me of Don Graves’ BASEBALL, SNAKES, AND SUMMER SQUASH, which is one of my favorite books to use to draw poetry from children and adults.

Today’s postings also brought lots of poetry “gifts.”

·      Laura Shovan is gifting 44 lucky people with postcard poems for her 44^th birthday in February. Today, she gifts all of us with “Speedway.”

·      At “The Opposite of Indifference,” Tabatha Yeatts shares both sweet and serious. Her “sweet” is a gift poem written for Tabatha by Robin Hood Black. The serious is sobering news about the plight of journalists around the world in 2012.

·      Robin Hood Black stopped by to say she has been buried in family, and is only sharing her poetry gift to Tabatha Yeatts.

·      At The Write Sisters, Diane Mayr gifts Mary Lee with an original birthday poem. 

Violet Nesdoly gifted children's author with "Wear a Scarf," a poem all you fashionistas out there will definitely want to read. 

·  Jone is gifting people with poetry books for her 26 Acts of Kindness. I don’t have 26 books, but I could definitely give away 26 poems. Hmmmm.

There are several gorgeous images from nature…

·   Matt Goodfellow journeys all the way from the UK to share two original poems, “Midnight Hare” and  “The Hill. Matt’s words evoke images of mystical, dark, evenings.

·   And more images from the natural world in Steve Withrow’s “Taunton River in December. ” Steve’s words make it easy to imagine the sound of those hungry geese honking for handouts.

And of course there are wishes, hopes, and dreams for the New Year…

·  At Growing Wild, Liz Steinglass shares an original New Year’s Poem, “This New Year.”

·   Mary Lee features Linda Pastan’s “Clock.” When I finish the first iteration of the roundup, I’ll be heading out to visit a friend and her new baby in the hospital. The friend is actually a young woman I have mentored since she was in second grade. She is now 22! Yikes!

·  At Drift Record, Julie Larios brings us “Blessed Illusion,” a perfect wish for the New Year.

·   At Bildingsroman, Little Willow posted D.H. Lawrence’s poignant, “A Passing Bell.”

·   At  Kurious Kitty’s Kurio Kabinet, Diane Mayr sends out the old year with Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Where Go the Boats?” Diane rings in the New Year with a haiku postcard exchange to celebrate  the coming of the New Year at Random Noodling. 

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Friday evening (9:30 MST)
OK, I think I've got everyone (if I left anyone out, it was totally unintentional, just email me and I will fix it!), it's been a pretty quiet Poetry Friday. Think I'll end tonight's festivities with a found poem from Parker J. Palmer.

What if we spent 2013 

focusing more 

on our shared human condition 

than on our differences? 

What if we cultivated 

the capacity 

to feel for each other's losses 

and developed a deeper awareness 

of our mutual mortality? 

Surely we'd want to spend more time 

working with others 

to bring a better, 

more beautiful 

world

 into being...  

Parker J. Palmer

EDGAR ALLAN POE'S PIE- J. Patrick Lewis

I'm always fussing at teachers about the benefits of read aloud. Read aloud acts as a commercial for books. Read aloud builds classroom community.  Read aloud puts the sound of standard English into kids' heads. And on and on and on. Yadda yadda yadda. The teachers in my building know that I love read aloud.

Some teachers/subjects, however, are a little harder sell than others. Take math, for instance. "I'm supposed to read aloud in math, Carol?" teachers say, wrinkling up their noses. "What exactly do you want me to read?"

Well, during the CYBILS judging, I found a perfect math read aloud. In EDGAR ALLAN POE'S PIE,  J. Patrick Lewis cleverly parodies fourteen classic poems, e.g. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," Edward Lear's "There was an Old Man with a Beard," and Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," not to mention other classical poets like Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman,  A. A. Milne, Langston Hughes, and Lewis Carroll. Somehow, he manages to maintain the poet's form and rhythm, and squeeze a math problem, or two or three, into each poem.

"Edward Lear's Elephant With Hot Dog"

(inspired by "There Was an Old Man with a Beard")

When an elephant sat down to order

A half of a third of a quarter

Of an eighty-foot bun

And a frankfurter, on,

Was it longer than three feet, or shorter?

"William Carlos Williams's Pizza"

The fifteen-inch square pizza
with three-by-three inch slices
was so inviting

I couldn't resist
eating nineteen and a half of them

Forgive me, Flossie
you were hungry, too
i put the box back
in the refrigerator

beside the white chickens
how many pieces
of pizza were left?

The poems are a little tricky and lots of fun. Answers are upside down in the illustrations.  A two-page spread in the back gives a little information about the poets.

Absolutely perfect for a math lesson read aloud!

THE LIONS OF LITTLE ROCK- Kristin Levine

Most people are familiar with the Little Rock Nine, but far fewer know what happened in Little Rock, Arkansas, the year after that. Governor Faubus, determined to prevent integration of schools in his state, decreed that no high schools would open. And for a whole year they didn't. THE LIONS OF LITTLE ROCK, by Kristin Levine, tells the story of that year through the eyes of Marlee, a twelve-year-old girl.

Marlee is a shy, shy, shy. So shy that her older sister,  Judy, makes her promise that she will say five words on the first day of middle school. Marlee keeps her promise to her sister when Liz, a new girl in town, asks if she can sit with her in the cafeteria. Liz gradually coaxes Marlee out of her timidity by inviting her to work on a social studies presentation which they practice in front of the animals at the Little Rock Zoo.

The day of the presentation, Liz doesn't show up at school. Soon, the social studies teacher pulls Marlee out into the hall to tell her that Liz will not be returning. Liz, it seems, is a light-skinned black girl, pretending to be white, so that she can attend Marlee's all-white middle school. And in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1958, that just isn't done. Marlee, is determined to maintain the friendship that she and Liz have created. She doesn't realize that their friendship not only violates social mores of the time, but also places Liz, her family, and other members of their community in grave danger.

THE LIONS OF LITTLE ROCK is perfect for helping intermediate and middle school readers understand a really significant year during the early part of the Civil Rights movement. Levine has done a terrific job embedding a truckload of history within a really engaging story.

This would be an excellent January read aloud!

LAST LAUGHS- ANIMAL EPITAPHS

Two terrific poets.

Epitaphs for thirty

Animals of land, sky and sea.

Very punny. 

"Chicken Crosses Over"
She never found the answer
to the age-old question,
Why did the chicken cross the ro--?



"Ciao, Cow"
This grave is peaceful,
the tombstone shaded,
but I'm not here,
I've been cream-ated. 


"Final Pound for a Hound"
Once he dug holes in the lawn;
now he's there himself
dog-gone.


"Firefly's Final Flight"
Lights out.

I LAY MY STITCHES DOWN- Cynthia Grady

Last year, my fourth graders read a lot of poetry. And did a lot of science.  Some of the best poetry that they wrote integrated their love of poetry with their learning about science. As I think about that experience, I wonder how teachers might include more poetry into work in the content areas. I have been on the lookout for books that integrated poetry, science, and social studies.

This month, I came across I LAY MY STITCHES DOWN, a collection of approximately 15 poems, each told through the voice of a slave. The book was written by poet and quiltmaker, Cynthia Grady, who introduces the book, saying:

"Quiltmaking and poetry share similarities in craft. In one, color and shape are organized into an overall pattern; in the other, sound and structure create the pattern. Each poem in this collection is named for a traditional quiltblock and reflects a metaphorical patchwork of circumstances encounter by enslaved people in America…

To reflect the three layers of a quilt, I've engage three references in each poem: a biblical or spiritual reference, and a sewing or fiber arts reference in addition to the imagery the poem calls for…

Grady's poems capture a variety of voices, including field workers, slave children, runaways, a slave who has just been beaten and a mother who has just watched her daughter sold away.

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Like a hyena on the hunt, you know,
he opportunistic, unspecialized.
The bounty hunter prowl the riverbank.
He use the wind to his advantage and
he listen: he watch intently. A slave
to greed, the hunter aine no match fo rthis
old pilgrim in the woods. He don't quite hear the owl that call my name to take me to
the water where the current runs less swit.
I wait-- then thread my way to freedomland.

SCHOOLHOUSE
Each morning after walking Little Miss
to school, we steal away beneath the oak
to piece together everything we hear.
The teacher catch us making letters in
the dirt with sticks one day. Her eyes go wide
and icy blue. She walk away. We fear'd
our backs would get the rawhide stich. Instead,
she twitch the curtain at the window, teach
her lessons loud and clear-- her voice, a prayer
with wings. It give us hope; it sing us home. 

Each two-page spread is organized in a similar fashion. The top portion of the left hand page displays the poem, titled after a quilt pattern, and set on a white background. A colorful quilted strip, in the pattern of the title, separates the poem from the bottom portion of the page, which contains historical information about slavery, or the song reference, or other information that might be helpful to the reader.

The right hand side of the page is a full-color oil painting by Michele Wood, who does an amazing job capturing the image contained in the words against a colorful background of quilts and patterns. I would love to have one of Wood's beautiful illustrations hanging in my living room.

Intermediate and adolescent readers might not understand this book, left to their own devices. However, it's definitely a book that could be read aloud and appreciated within the context of a unit on slavery or African American history. I know it's one I will be using with older readers.