Dozens of Cousinsis a rollicking, frolicking, phenomenally active story about a band of multi-aged cousins joining together for their annual family reunion. Told in verse, the actions of these wild ‘beasties’ rumble off the page and straight into the reader’s hearts. Inspired by a poem written by Shutta Crum about her childhood escapades, the book is one that can repeatedly be enjoyed by young and old alike. David Catrow’s illustrations perfectly depict the comical charm of this wacky extended family, one that is wildly committed to one another.
The story begins as the cousins enthusiastically leap out of the car, overcome with the desire to spend time with one another. Their frenzied energy predictably gets them into trouble, a situation pulled straight from Shutta’s memory bank. And in the end, babies snooze on grandparents’ soft bellies while the buzz of lightning bugs lull the rest of the beastie cousins to sleep. Only to wake up full of energy and eager to return again next year!
Shutta is offering a teaching guide as a free download from her website. In it you will find a number of activities celebrating the annual convening of Dozens of Cousins.
Moving is never easy for a child. The anticipation of loss can be overwhelming, most especially the loss of friendship. The fear of losing friends and the worry that, perhaps, the child might not find friends as dear as those she is leaving behind can be down-right depressing. The Good-Pie Partyaddresses these all-too painful issues in the most delicious way!
Liz Garton Scanlon’s sparse, yet poignant, text is tenderly complimented by Kady MacDonald Denton’s stunning watercolor illustrations. There is a resonant connection between the text and art, one that perfectly expresses the wide range of a child’s emotional reaction to this life-altering event – moving. The Good-Pie Party is a celebration of friendship, community, laughter, love, and loss – a testimony that, under the light of the lopsided moon, true friendship knows no boundaries.
Click HERE to access a CCSS and TEKS aligned Readers’ Theatre script and Curriculum Guide, complete with a special recipe for, you guessed it, PIE!
April – Poetry Month continues. We can choose to read an anthology, a whole collection of poems. Sometimes the power of one poem fills our heart and causes us to pause, imagine, ponder. I would like to share the beginning of this poem by Arnold Adoff:
“… t r u e change is always too slow
and o u r b e s t hopes rest with
s t e a d y
on
beyond our own times
the t r u e revolutions h a p p e n within the covers of our best books inside the noises of words with words inside the movements of reading eyes….”
From the online April site of Greg Pincus -www.gottabook.blogspot.com
Yes, one poem at a time, throughout the year, everyday, is a treasure to share with students, with family, with yourself.
We are familiar with the telling of story through ballads, either sung or recited. Another story form of poetry is the novel in verse. Novels in verse are an accessible way to look at emotional issues, such as WORDS WITH WINGS by Nikki Grimes described on ReaderKidZ earlier this month. Novels in verse can be funny or serious, or both. Described below are several of my favorites. Whatever your age, try a novel in verse. I think you will be surprised that after a page or two you will not even know your are reading poetry because you will be in the life of the children who people the pages.
First, a classic, a best, and one of the first: OUT OF THE DUST by Karen Hesse, awarded the Newbery as well as many other awards. Hesse’s voice in this novel captures the rhythm and tone of Oklahoma dialect without getting in the way of the fast-paced story. What a lesson in US history as well as feeling the emotional grit required to survive the hardships of farming during the terrible dust bowl decade.Karen Hesse’s second novel in verse, WITNESS, is an equally gripping but very different story.
A recent novel in verse, WHERE THE STEPS WERE, by Andrea Cheng is contemporary and told in alternate voices of five students in Miss D’s third grade. A racist incident ignites strong reactions but students unite and work together with the guidance of their teacher. The fast, contemporary free verse makes this an excellent selection for readers’ theater. Andrea Cheng’s black-and-white woodcuts show additional images about the tough world in which these kids live. WHERE THE STEPS WERE reminds one of the verse-novel by Walter Dean Myers’ HERE IN HARLEM: POEMS IN MANY VOICES though Myers’ is for an older readership.
And more, more, more excellent novels in verse that are especially accessible to readers who like spare words and that extra white space on the pages:
Remember picking dandelions? Splashing through puddles in your rubber boots, which in England are called “wellies”? Michael and Claire Morpurgo have created a charming book of discovery and poetry. Claire has selected a wide variety of poems to include as part of the “image and word collage” as Pippa rambles through the country lanes of Devon, England in her wellies. The book is Pippa’s diary-journal and scrapbook, filled with a visual feast of observations, drawings, and an assortment of “found and saved bits and pieces.” Part poetry anthology, part children’s scrapbook, and part whimsy, this unusual book celebrates a love of language. All royalties benefit Farms for City Children, so money spent is doubly beneficial.
Michael Morpurgo is recently well-known for his unusual book, War Horse, a heart-warming story of a boy and his beloved horse, separated because of the realities of war. Michael, too, was separated from his home during the World War II bombing of London when many city children were placed with country families to keep them safe from war’s devastation.
Michael Morpurgo is one of England’s beloved authors and a former Children’s Laureate. Clare Morpurgo, author and Michael’s wife, is the daughter of Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books.
Our guest librarian, Megan Poynter Fink, knows how to help young and old readers alike find a book that will hook them.
“Books Fall Open, You Fall In, Delighted Where You’ve Never Been…” wrote the poet David McCord. Finding the right book can be a puzzle when students enter my library and have that “I don’t know what to do” look on their face. I find it usually helps to ask a few questions and find out more about their interests.
1. What movies/t.v. shows do you enjoy watching?
This helps me figure out what genres that they might like to read. If they’ve enjoyed watching Disney’s Frozen, then a fantasy book will be a good choice. I recommend Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica D. George.
2. What are your interests/hobbies? The world of non-fiction can seem intimidating to readers until they recognize that a non-fiction book opens up worlds of wonder on a variety of subjects. I recommend Saving the Ghost of the Mountain: an expedition among snow leopards in Mongolia by Sy Montgomery.
Finding the right reading level requires patience. I almost hate to have this discussion with students because I never want to eliminate a book from a reader’s choice. However, with younger students especially, choosing the right reading level can be the difference between a challenging read and frustrating one. We use the “Five Finger Rule” at our elementary school library. To quote ReadingRockets.org the five finger rules give this advice, “Choose a book that you think you will enjoy. Read the second page. Hold up a finger for each word you are not sure of, or do not know. If there are five or more words you did not know, you should choose an easier book. Still think it may not be too difficult? Use the five finger rule on two more pages.”
For older readers, I recommend reading the first one to three paragraphs of a book and then if you are not fascinated, try another book. Sometimes the first page of a book can hook your interest and other times I will recommend books to students and advise them that they will need to be patient for about ten pages to wait for the plot to begin or for the rising action to get started. One of my favorite examples of waiting for a wonderful plot is when I worked on a book committee and I had to read certain books to vote on the titles. When I was handed this book, I groaned at first because The Lost Conspiracy by Frances Hardinge is a huge book of 500 pages. I was not convinced I would make it through this book, even being a fast reader. However, after the first ten pages I was hooked because I had to find out what happened to the psychic sisters when their village is mysteriously destroyed. It has become one of my favorites and an example of giving a book a chance to set the scenes and create their world for your enjoyment.
Megan Poynter Fink is a middle school librarian at Charlotte Country Day School. She began her career working in publishing and for the New York Public Library. She is an active member of YALSA and has served on YALSA’s Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults, Teen Read Week and Best Books for Young Adults committees. Megan has written for VOYA and BOOKLINKS magazines. She enjoys cooking, Zumba classes and city adventures in Charlotte, NC.
When my teenager was young, I wanted to share good poetry with her without taking away her choice of bedtime books, so I started, unintentionally, a strange tradition of reading to her from children’s poetry collections while she took her baths. She was a dawdling bather and my only child at the time, so we were not often rushed. Now that she’s buried in assigned high school reading, I share poems with her all too rarely – usually called out from my part of the house to hers. But I like to think that good poetry from bath times long-past never washes completely away. – Stephanie Parsley
Twenty-three poems take readers and listeners many places familiar to babies, from stroller rides to the depths of the kitchen drawer, and touch on common objects and experiences such as noses, sneezes, and blankies. With beautiful illustrations by Tomie dePaola, Little Poems for Tiny Ears will enchant babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, who will see (and hear) themselves on the pages; and adults will not tire of reading the original rhyme aloud.
With bold, two-page, woodblock-and-watercolor illustrations by Holly Meade, this collection of 17 short poems about sea creatures offers much to savor. Simple rhyming language makes the collection friendly for young readers, while some of the poems contain verbal surprises and more complex vocabulary that will be appreciated by experienced readers – for example, apparition paired with magician in “The Octopus,” and the metaphor “fair compass in a carapace” (which had me consulting my online dictionary) in “The Sea Turtle.”
This short novel in verse features Gabriella (Gabby), a daydreamer who has just moved to a new neighborhood and school after her parents’ break-up. Simple words such as snowflake spark Gabby’s daydreams and open windows connected to happier times, helping her deal with the difficulties in her life. Will Gabby’s daydreaming get her into trouble with her new teacher and cause her to be the friendless “weird kid” – or will Gabby be discovered as the gifted poet she really is?
“Waterfall”
Say “waterfall,”
and the dreary winter rain
outside my classroom window
turns to liquid thunder,
pounding into a clear pool
miles below,
and I can’t wait
to dive in.
Stephanie Parsley Ledyard is a writer, certified teacher, and high-school library assistant who lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, two daughters (ages 16 and 3), cats, and dog. She publishes her own poetry on her blog, Sparsely and has an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
When I was young, I was not a strong reader starting out, but my grandparents’ leather-bound books of children’s literature contained things I could read with ease: poems. Poetry culls some of the best features of language – wordplay, rhythm, tone, voice, rhyme, and more – down to bite-sized delights that can be enjoyed in one sitting. I’m a much better reader now, and I savor poetry in quiet moments. I especially enjoy reading it aloud to my children. – Stephanie Parsley
Who’s ever heard of a skid-steer loader – or read a poem about one? (I have! I have!) From garbage truck to ambulance, steamroller to cherry picker, Vestergaard’s poems, combined with acrylic-and-charcoal illustrations by David Slonim, bring construction and community helper vehicles to life for little ones. Adults won’t get bored reading these aloud, as there’s plenty of fun rhythm, thoughtful rhyme and colorful art to delight the mind, ear, and eye.
Who made this hole? A digger.
Too small? We’ll make it bigger …
(From “Excavator”)
For the transitional readers:
Cat Talkby Patricia MacLachlan and Emily MacLachlan Charest (Katherine Tegen Books, 2013)
Readers who’ve ever experienced a cat pouncing on their feet or taking a nap on their clean white shirts will recognize and love the cats on these pages. But these 13 poems aren’t just for people who’ve been wakened by scratchy-tongue licks. Though they’re accessible for young readers and of course appealing to cat lovers, MacLachlan and Charest’s collection of 13 poems will have readers of all ages and cat-familiarity levels flipping back through the pages to linger in certain poems and the rich, realistic water-color paintings by Barry Moser.
… As hard as I try, I could never be more beautiful
Each poem in this collection uses only letters from the single-word subject – such as “Friend” (fred / finds / ed). The deceptively simple poems are paired with black-and-red illustrations that are almost retro in style. The book is thoughtfully designed, with colors and text that add to the poems to create an addicting reading experience. It will be difficult for readers to take in these poems without wanting to try writing their own.
Stephanie Parsley Ledyard is a writer, certified teacher, and high-school library assistant who lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, two daughters (ages 16 and 3), cats, and dog. She publishes her own poetry on her blog, Sparsely and has an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Mission Statement
To provide teachers, librarians, and parents with the resources and inspiration to foster a love of reading in kids, K-5.
