Poetry Friday: School's Out Edition

Schoooooooooooooooooooooooooool's out for summer!
Schoooooooooooooooooooooooooool's out forever!

Summer vacation started here this week, which brings all the joy of summer reading lists. A lot of people complain about reading lists, but I really like ours. The libraries and schools* work together to put together lists that have a wide variety of books for a wide variety of readers. They also get revisited every year, so new titles get added. AND! With the libraries and schools working together, every book on the list is still in print and owned by the library (in fact, we have lots of copies, because it's a reading list book!)

I mean, is Babymouse on your reading list? It's on mine.

There are also poetry books on the list for almost every grade. Some grades luck out with multiple poetry books AND verse novels.

Two of those books are ones I want to talk about today-- A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems (for rising 5th graders) and A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms (for rising 7th graders.) Both are selected by Paul B. Janeczko and illustrated by Chris Raschka

A Poke in the I is a collection of concrete poems, which are very visual in nature, are fun, and a great way to get kids to look at poetry in a different way.

One of my favorites from A Poke in the I is "Swan and Shadow" by John Hollander. I can't do proper formatting in the blog, but it's used in this post on How to Save the World.

A Kick in the Head is a book of different poetic forms. Up in the corner is the name of the form, the main page spreads are an example or two, and down in small print, it explains what the form is. There is more information on the form in the back.

So, it gives us an Aubade, which is explained in the fine print as "An aubade (oh-BAUD) is a poem without formal structure of rhyme that laments or celebrates the coming of dawn."

The example is "Morning Has Broken" by Eleanor Farjeon

Morning has broken
Like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them, springing
Fresh from the Word!

Sweet the rain's new fall
Sunlit from heaven,
Like the first dewfall
On the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness
Of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness
Where his feet pass.

Mine is the sunlight!
Mine is the morning.
Born of the one light
Eden saw play!
Praise with elation.
Praise every morning,
God's re-creation
Of the new day!

Which I just love, mostly because I love the way Cat Stevens set it to music. It was in our hymnal growing up, and was always one of my favorites to sing.

*Well, we work with the public school district for the county we're located in. We have a ton of students who go to private, charter, or public schools from other counties who use the library too. And by "we" I mean the library. Personally, I am not involved in the process at all. Sadly.

Roundup is over at Two Writing Teachers. Join the fun!

Books Provided by... my local library

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