Nature Poems to See By: a comic artist interprets more great poetry (illustrator) Julian Peters (Net Galley)

 This is a collection of 24 famous poems that have been illustrated or presented in the style of a graphic novel. The poems are arranged by seasons, with six poems for each season, and most would be familiar to anyone who has ever studied poetry, like "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" by Shakespeare, and "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," by Robert Frost.  Peters seems to make an effort to include poems from different time periods and a few different cultures, though most are from Western authors. Some of the illustrations are more like graphic novels, with one frame per each couplet, while other seem more like true illustrations, with a lot of words associated with one picture.  Some of the poems are illustrated literally, and in other cases Peters tries to suggest symbolic meanings implied by the poems. At the end of each graphic novel depiction of a poem, the poem is also printed in  traditional font and format.

I received this book as a pre-print from the publisher, Plough.  It has been a while since I have read a poetry collection and I thought that expressing poetry in graphic novel format is an interesting idea. As it turned out I generally liked the book, but I liked some treatments of the poems better than others. I preferred illustrations that did a literal depiction of the poem instead of trying to tie in symbolic meaning.  If a poem has veiled symbolism, one of the charms of reading the poem is trying to figure out the symbolism, or maybe trying to find personal meaning in the symbolism.  The artist, by depicting his symbolic interpretation of the poem, steals from me the experience of creating my own interpretation. That being said, if I were a high school student and needed to interpret a poem and found this graphic novel version on it, I could be pretty excited about it. I actually think teens, particularly English/reader nerd types, are the perfect target audience for this book.  I could also see a high school teacher using one of these illustrated poems as a springboard for a good discussion. If I were a high school English teacher, I would definitely want a copy on my classroom shelf. (2026, 141 p.)

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

This book in free verse starts when Will sees his brother, Shawn, get shot on the streets of an inner city. As he is left by himself to deal with his grief he remembers "the three rules"; don`t cry,  don't snitch and get revenge. He manages the first and the second, and tries to steel himself to do the third. He believes he knows who killed his brother so he finds his brother's gun and gets into the elevator to go out and do the deed.  As he starts down the elevator door opens on different floors admitting people from Will's past who all died through gun violence. As they tell their stories the reader sees the senseless loss that results from following "the rules".

This is the first time in a while that I finished a book and had to say "Wow!"  I have enjoyed several Jason Alexander books before but this one was Amazing!  It has such a powerful message written in totally accessible language.  It is rich in imagery too.  This is one an English teacher could really sink her teeth into.  

I actually saw Jason Alexander speak just last week as the keynote at the ALA conference opening session.  That talk was also totally awesome.   So, I guess Mr Alexander is on a roll. (2017, 320 p)

One Last Word by Nikki Grimes

This is the last book I needed to read from the Library's Mock Newbery List.  It is a collection of poetry by Nikki Grimes, based on poetry from many of the famous authors from the Harlem Renaissance.  What Grimes has done is taken lines, and even whole poems, and written new poems in which the last word of each line of the new poem is a word from the original poem.  For example, the line, "to your own self be true" could become the poem

It is not so hard to

Think of what your

Parents would do, but your own

Actions are a reflection of self

Not what your parents want you to be

So you must decide which you is true.

 (I just made that up, it is not from the book)

Grimes explains in an author's note that this form of poetry is call "Golden Shovel."  I must admit I wasn't that impressed at first.  I tend to like poetry with more rhyme and meter. As I read the collection, however, I began to realize that Grimes had put a lot of wisdom and hope into the poems. Many of the poems are directed specifically to a black audience, but have a message of self acceptance that is applicable to anyone.  I also really liked the illustrations that appear with each poem.  They are by a variety of the most prominent African American illustrators. All in all, I don't know how much readership this collection will have in my community, but I am not surprised that it has received a lot of national acclaim. (120 p. 2017)

I'm Just Not Good at Rhyming by Chris Harris

Ok, I just finished my new favorite book of the year.  Yes, this one has made it to top spot on Newbery hopefuls. This is a collection of poems that are amazingly clever and funny, reminiscent of Shel Silverstein for a modern audience.  Some of concrete poems but most (despite the title) are rhyming and actually have good meter.  One or two are rather touching, but most are silly or down right irreverent.  All are smart, and clever (oh so, so, so, clever).  Lane's Smith's illustrations perfectly compliment the tone of the poems, and there are several places where the author and illustrator exchange playful patter.  I totally want to do this for a Girls Read book club next year. (see previous post.) (2017, 221 pages)

(Carol, I if you still read my blog, Ghetty would love this book.)

Out of Wonder by Kwame Alexander et alii.

In this book Kwame Alexander and two other authors write poems honoring other famous poets.  Some of the poems are "after the style" of the poets they honor, and some just say nice things about them.  The poetry is mostly free verse, and is quite good.  This one is also on our Newbery list, but we are wondering if it is ineligible because one of the three authors is Canadian.

Actually I am thinking it is a contender for Caldecott as well as for Newbery.  The illustrations bold and colorful and do a good job of suggesting the time period and personality of the featured authors, while still maintaining a common thread the holds the book together. (40 p. 2017)

Freedom Over Me by Ashley Bryan

Here is one of this year's Newbery Honor books.  Bryan was inspired to write the book when she found a list of items to be auctioned at an 1828 estate sale that included eleven slaves.  Bryan writes two poems for each slave, one that shows how the slave appears on the outside, and one about the slave's inner hopes and dreams.  The 20 poems are well done, and show the slaves as people, and not just victims. The poems are illustrated with bright watercolor and ink drawings, superimposed on reproductions of historical documents related to the slave trade. I don't know if I would have chosen this for a Newbery honor, but I am totally okay with the idea that the award will motivate more people to read this handsome and thoughtful book. (32 p.)

Neon Aliens Ate My Homework and Other Poems by Nick Cannon

This is a poetry collection by well known rapper and comedian, Nick Cannon.  Cannon also performs the poems on the recorded book version. They are not Pulitzer prize level poetry, but they are certainly full of vibrancy and fun. Cannon does not shy away from potty humor, and there is at least one swear word, but nothing you wouldn't hear in the halls of a grade school.  Some of the poems are just silly, like the title poem, but some are a little more serious.  There are several that are motivational, and also some that discourage hate culture.  The poems are illustrated by bold and energetic black and white line drawings. This would be a great first exposure to poetry for an inner city kid, or for any reluctant poetry reader who has to get through a poetry book that is more than 100 pages. (142 p)

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

This is a memoir, in free verse, of the early childhood of the author.  She was born in Ohio, but her parents split up when she was very young and she went to live with her grandparents in South Carolina.  There she was able to see and experience the currents of the Civil Rights Movement first hand.  Then, when she was school age, she moved to New York and learned to be a city girl. It was especially interesting to me because she was born about the same time as I was, so some of the cultural icons she mentions were familiar to me as a girl, Crissy Dolls, The Jackson Five, roller skates.  But at the same time her life was totally different from mine.  I have never been part of a racial minority.  I never felt like people were telling me what I could or could not do or be because of my race. Also, I never had to deal with poverty or divorce.  It is good to get a peek into someone else's life once in a while, to remind ourselves that not all people and not all life experiences are the same. Another interesting theme of the book was that her sister was the bookish "good student", and her brother was a wiz at science, so she felt like the academically untalented one. Yet she was the one who has become famous by winning the Coretta Scott King award, three Newbery honors and many other children's literature awards. This is a good book, but I don't know how many children would love it.  It is more likely to appeal to adults, like me, who can remember growing up in the 60's and early 70's.(336 p.)

Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Josh and Jordan Bell are middle-school-aged twins who are both basketball proteges.  The boys make an unstoppable team on court and are leading their school in a undefeated season.  The twins have always been close, until a new girl moves into town.  Jordan's growing relationship with the new girl forces a wedge between the brothers. At the same time both boys worry about their father who used to be a pro ball player, but now suffers from health problems.  When Josh's hurt feelings lead him to make a bad choice, more than the basketball championship is at risk.

This book won both the Newbery and the Coretta Scott King honor award this year.  I always try to guess the winner each year, but this one came out of the blue.  I thought for sure Rain Reign would win because it was the first book to deal well with autism.  I am so glad this one won instead.  This book is a gift to teachers, librarians and reluctant readers.  The book is written in free verse, but much of it is basically written in rap and it is really well done. Imagine what we used to call a "jock" (do they use that term anymore?  Am I dating myself?) who is assigned to read a Newbery winner.  The poor kid has never read a full length novel in his life, but pours over copied of Sports Illustrated.  The kid rolls his eyes and sighs, but the librarian says, "I have the book for you."  So the kid gets the book, looks at the cover, and shrugs.  His mood changes from "oh no" to "ok" and he starts to read.  Soon he is talking about the book to other kids on the team and showing them parts.  It is brilliant!  Alexander not only wrote a book that will reach a whole new demographic, he helped me look at the "rap" culture differently.  Ok, there is a lot of trashy rap out there, but reading this book helped me see for the first time why the kind of rap that is boastful could appeal to a ghetto culture.  So much is against a kid growing up on the streets, but boasting rap gives them a chance to do positive self talk that is cool.  The rhythm and the clever word choice makes it cool.

 I guess I have been gushing.  It was a well written book, (and a good audio recording if you want to listen to it) and I am glad it won the Newbery. (237 p)

Words with Wings by Nikki Grimes

Gabby has always been a daydreamer, but since she moved to a new school after her parent's divorce, her daydreaming has gotten to be a bigger problem.  A single "word with wings" can send her off into a world of her imagination and make her forget what she is supposed to be doing.  In an attempt to please her parents and teacher, she tries to suppresses her daydreams for a while, but that just makes her sad. Finally her teacher encourages her to write what she is thinking and both her parents and teacher discover that her daydreaming has made her a wonderful writer.  This is a short novel written in free verse. Even though the text isn't long, Ms Grimes does a good job suggesting dimensional characters and complicated relationships.  She is good with word craft, and it is not a surprise that this book the Coretta Scott King honor award last year. This is a good choice for either a child that has to read a poetry book over a certain length, or for a reluctant reader who has to read a realistic fiction novel. (84p)

Poetry

On Saturday we had our Family Literacy Symposium at the library where I work. Each year the Children's Department Staff do a "60 books in 60 minutes" kind of presentation where we highlight our favorite books from our section from the previous year. I order the 800's in my library (and the 600's, but someone else did all the nonfiction) and here are my favorite picks from last year.

Lemonade and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word by Bob Raczka

Sometimes we think about poetry as an old and venerated form of literature, but there are creative souls out there who are still thinking of new things to do with words. In this book, Raczka takes a single word, and uses the letters from the word to form other words. Then he uses those words to create a free verse poem. In the book, the typesetting is very clever. The poem is presented twice, once vertically with the letters dripping or tumbling below the original word to show how the new words were arranged, and again in normal horizontal form, so it is easier to read. Some of the resulting poems aren't so great, but some are not bad, "Halloween/ all alone/ an owl/a howl/ oh no".

A Dazzling Display of Dogs: Concrete Poems by Betsy Franco
In this book, the text of the poems is fully incorporated into the illustrations. It is hard to explain without actually seeing the illustrations. For example, for the poem, Baloo Got Out, the dog gets out of the gate and eats a bunch of stuff he was not supposed to. The list of things he ate appears in the dog's belly, on illustrations of each item. The illustrations are busy, bright and fun. The thing that impressed me the most, however, is almost all the poems rhyme and scan. Usually concrete poetry is free verse. I guess poets think it was hard enough to make the poem have visual impact, that they aren't going to worry about rhyming too. But Franco, and the illustrator, Michael Wertz pull off both.

Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poems by Kristine O/Connell George
This one doesn't have any clever gimmicks. It is just a collection of sweet poems about a little sister. The poems explore the full range of emotions one might feel about a younger sibling, from affection to embarrassment to jealousy. The poems are honest, but never bitter and often tender. Nancy Carpenter's illustrations are also sweet, and match the tone of the peoms

Spot the Plot: A Riddle Book of Book Riddles by J. Patrick Lewis
I included this one just because it is fun. This is a collection of poem riddles about classic children's literature. You read the poem and try to guess the book it refers to. The answers are in the back of the book but most people will be able to answer without consulting the back. Lynn Munsinger's illustrations add more clues. This book shows how a few of the best children's books really have touched all of our lives.

The other one I highlighted was Book Speak: Poems about Books by Laura Purdie Salas, but that is one I reviewed for SLJ, so I won't include a review here. You can google my name and the title and find the review I wrote for SLJ.

Mirror Mirror: a Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer

This one wins the prize for the most clever poetry book of the year. In this book the author writes a free verse poem (really, just a few well crafted sentences) that can then be read with the lines of the poems in reverse order. The first poem tells about a fairy tale from one character's point of view, and the other (the reverse one) tells the story from another character's point of view. No kidding. For example, in the poem about Red Riding Hood, the last few lines of the first poem say,"picking berries to eat-/juicy and sweet/what a treat!/ But a girl/mustn't dawdle./ After all, Grandma is waiting." and then the first few lines of the next poem (the Wolf's poem) "After all, Grandma's waiting./mustn't dawdle.../But a girl!/ What a treat-/juicy and sweet./picking berries to eat." Isn't that wicked? The illustrations are cool, too. They are each divided in half, each half showing one of the points of view, but still related to each other. If I were to actually purchase a poetry book this year for myself, this is the one I would buy.

R is for Rhyme: a Poetry Alphabet by Judy Young

Back to the poetry books. You can find an alphabet book about almost anything under the sun, so why not poetry? For each letter of the alphabet Young chooses a vocabulary word related to poetry. Most of the words are forms of poems, like haiku for H and cinquain for C. A few of the vocabulary words are poetic devices, like end rhyme for E and onomatopoeia for O. For each vocabulary word, Young provides a poem that contains or is an example of the word, and a three to four paragraph explanation of the term. Now, last summer, as my blog readers know, I did a poetry study with my kids, and I can tell you, I wish I had known about this book when I did that study. The poems in the book are decent, but the explanations and the variety of terms is very impressive. If there were someone who, like me, wanted to study poetry at home, they could get this book, take a letter a week, and there would be half a year of poetry lessons. The book is illustrated with full color, pastel drawings that are slightly stylized and fairly amusing. (about 56 p)

Guyku: a Year of Haiku for Boys by Bob Raczka

One form of poetry all children learn at school is haiku. In fact, my children studied haiku several different years, and by the second or third, they were pretty tired of it. They would just roll their eyes, and then start spouting spontaneous horrible haiku at the dinner table. (I am thinking mostly of Benjamin, who often spouts poetry spontaneously). So why am I highlighting a haiku book on my top 5? Well, like all forms of poetry, there is good haiku and bad haiku, and this is actually pretty good haiku. What makes it fun is that with his haiku Raczka shines a flashlight, so to speak, on wonderful experiences of growing up a boy. He talks about all the simple pleasures boys (and girls) do when they have all the time in the world and live in a world that is safe and inviting. The poems are arranged by seasons. In "spring"he talks about catching a grasshopper, riding a bike and flying a kite. He talks about climbing trees in summer, playing in leaves in fall, throwing snow balls, and hiding under a snow laden pine tree in winter. I remember doing all that kind of stuff when I was a child and I hope children still go outside and enjoy nature that way. The book is illustrated with very simple cartoon drawings colored in with understated pastels. The text is printed in a large, child friendly font. I think the idea there was to focus attention on the words, not just on the illustrations. For adults, the book is nostalgic, and for children, I hope it will give them some ideas of what to do beside playing computer games.

The Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman

Here is a more serious poetry book that couples really good writing with lovely illustrations. Sidman has written 12 poems about the night in a forest. Some are about animals, and others about trees or the moon. Some of the poems are rhymed and metered, while others are free verse or concrete poems. The rhyming poems are really well done, with careful attention to meter and form. The free verse poems are also good with sensitivity to the sound and rhythm of the words. A good poet manages to make the words flow naturally, and you never get the sense that they were forced into a certain word choice by the structure of the poem. Sidman pulls this off really quite well.

Each of the poems are accompanied by a beautiful illustrations done using the technique of etching. The artist puts down color, and then covers it with a black overcoat. Then he (Rick Allen in this case) scrapes away some of the black to reveal the color beneath. It is a good technique for a book about the night.

Finally, each spread had an information paragraph about the subject of the poem. The informational paragraphs are written in prose, but they is well crafted, and almost poem-like. They contain some interesting facts that I had never heard before. The three elements combined--the good poetry, lovely illustrations and interesting information paragraphs--make this probably my top pick of my top five.

Family Literacy Symposium Titles

On January 22 our library will be holding a Family Literacy Symposium. The Keynote speaker is Leif Enger, author of Peace Like a River. As part of the symposium the Children's Department is offering a presentation of "The Best Books of 2010." Each of the Children's staff were asked to choose a few books from the section for which they order to showcase in the presentation. Since I order the 800's (poetry and joke books, mostly) I chose 5 poetry books as my picks. You, oh faithful readers of my blog, get to have a sneak peak at them. I won't blog them all today, or I would be up to late, but I will get to them over the next day or so.