You are the absolute worst.
The end.
Here is a picture of a squirrel in the snow.
The end the end.
Tag: poetry
I really love this book.
I do, last April for National Poetry Month I used it with my 3rd graders. Because April is such a short month for us, we didn’t get very far with it. I love Jack Prelutsky in general, and I decided to give this one a shot with my 1st graders this year (my 3rd graders are still reading Hugo Cabret, so we kind of skipped poetry month to make sure we finish by June). For some reason after beefing up my Prelutsky collection this year I neglected to get Scranimals, which would have been a great companion with this. Next year.
Read more on This Month With 1st Grade: Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant…
Okay, I know this post is months late (the Newbery winners were announced in January). I have a very good reason for this; it took me this long to get my hands on a copy of The Surrender Tree, the last book left for me to read. I finally got it from the library this week, so here are my thoughts on each of this year’s Newbery books.
For National Poetry Month in April I did a Jack Prelutsky unit with 3rd grade. We don’t actually have many Prelutsky books in my collection right now, I’ll be ordering those for next year. So because of that, and because April was short due to spring break, we focused on Behold the Bold Umbrellphant, which is a wonderful book of silly poems (illustrated by the wonderful Carin Berger). The kids loved it, and after we’d read all the poems during week 2 of the unit, I broke them into groups and gave each of them an animal. They worked together to come up with their own animal/object hybrids. So I got things like doorilla from gorilla, lionopoly from lion, and umbrellican from pelican. Then I used this resource guide from Harper Collins for our game days last week. The kids did the mazes, alliteration game, rhyming game, etc. Next year I’ll expand the Prelutsky books I use, but this was a great age for this project.
Boogie Knights is a silly, spooky story about the annual Madcap Monster Ball. It’s midnight in the castle, and the prince can’t sleep. His seven ghostly knights in armor (plus a spirited princess) make their way down to the dungeon to dance the night away. While the prince creeps around trying to see what’s happening, werewolves, vampires, and all kinds of ghouls have a great time. This is a neat ghost story and an obvious choice for a silly read aloud near Halloween.
Rain Play by Cynthia Cotten is a rhyming poem about playing in the rain. It has a great, tall format with absolutely gorgeous cut paper illustrations by Javaka Steptoe that manage to be bright and joyful even when depicting the bad weather.
So now I have finished one book while home sick this week. The Death of Jayson Porter is just…excellent. This novel in verse is the story of sixteen-year-old Jayson, who contemplates suicide on a daily basis because of the horrors of his everyday life. His white mother beats him senseless regularly, runs off with strange men, drinks heavily, and can’t hold down a job. His black father is a junkie living in an even more dangerous part of Jayson’s florida town than he does. Jayson buses to a private school in a nearby town, paid for by a mysterious benefactor whose true identity brings some of the biggest heartbreak and hope in the book. Jayson dreams of jumping from the balcony in front of his 18th floor apartment-his death, he feels, is something he can control. The title of the book is not misleading, but it’s also not quite the death one would imagine.
The House in the Night is a fantastic modern nursery rhyme. It’s a great bedtime or nap time story with a cumulative pattern poem and unbelievably charming illustrations by Beth Krommes. The black and white scratch images with golden yellow highlights are just excellent counterpoints to Swanson’s poem. This is the kind of high impact little volume that kids will reach for over and over at bedtime, like the classic Goodnight Moon. The tone and rhythm is perfect for kids about to go to sleep, and the illustrations are just dreamy. It’s delightful.
Today was my first true program of the summer. I based it around this fantastic book of poems, The Bookworm’s Feast by J. Patrick Lewis. Lewis did not write all the poems in the book, the last page gives credit to some other writers. But the general idea is that a gentleman bookworm throws a party for his friends, and they dive into the most delicious literature. The poems are about books, animals, lots of great things. I read a selection of poems to the kids, including “The Gentleman Bookworm,” “The Framboise Fair,” “Read…Think…Dream,” and “Two Good Books.” Then I finished with “The End of the Bookworm’s Feast.” The illustrations by John O’Brien are enjoyable, and I think most of the kids liked the poems.
I’m a fan of bell hooks’s picture books, especially those illustrated by Chris Raschka. I did a bell hooks program in February using Be Boy Buzz, Skin Again, and Happy to Be Nappy. I think the illustrations are wonderful and they are lyrical stories. They can be tricky for read-alouds unless you read them with a lyrical tone and act out some of the emotions. Some of my kids loved the books, some of them didn’t.
Read more on Grump Groan Growl by bell hooks and Chris Raschka…