'Grumbles from the Forest: Fairy-Tale Voices with a Twist" by Jane Yolen and Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Illustrated by Matt Mahurin (LS 5663)

Yolen, Jane and Rebecca Kai Dotlich. 2013. Grumbles from the Forest: Fairy-Tale Voices with a Twist. Illustrated by Matt Mahurin. Honesdale, PA: WordSong.

Cover Image from
www.boydsmillpress.com

Happily ever after...  Three words that seemingly end the fairy tales of our childhood.  But haven't you ever wanted to know what happened after the last page turned?  Or maybe you might have wanted to know the story from another character's point of view?  Or maybe a little more from one of the myriad princesses that grace the pages (and screens) of our fairy tales.  I am a huge fan of Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods that examines the before "happily ever after" and what would happen if there were another page after "happily ever after."  Jane Yolen and Rebecca Kai Dotlich's collection of poems, Grumbles from the Forest: Fairy-Tale Voices with a Twist, joins works like Into the Woods that take a peek behind the curtain and let the characters speak for themselves.

Yolen and Dotlich each contributed one poem for "fifteen of the most recognizable fairy tales in Western culture" (Yolen and Dotlich 2013, 5).  Some of their poems look at the events of the tale from the point-of-view of different character; some use the same character, but look at the tale through another person's eyes; while still others give a voice to the voiceless or a marginal character.  One poem appears on one page and the partner poem on the facing page.  They don't list the poet who wrote each particular poem with the title of the poem or on the table of contents.  You have to look at the verso title page in order to find out which poems were written by Yolen or Doltich.  At the end of the book, Yolen and Dotlich offer additional information about the fairy tales, generally alternate titles of the fifteen fairy tales or alternative versions (different cultures).  They also include a few websites where you can find more information: SurLaLune Fairy Tales, Hans Christian Anderson: Fairy Tales and Stories, and Yolen's own website (look under Works).

The fifteen fairy tales Yolen and Dotlich use for inspiration are: Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast, The Gingerbread Boy, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Princess and the Pea, Rumplestiltskin, The Frog Prince, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Thumbelina, and The Three Bears.  Most of them should be familiar to many students, especially those who have paid careful attention to their Disney films or can connect the dots in the Shrek series of films.  A couple of the fairy tales -- and I'm thinking particularly of The Frog Prince and The Three Billy Goats Gruff -- might not be as familiar to students as the ones like Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast that have been given the full Disney treatment, i.e. utter ubiquitousness via movie merchandising and membership in the Disney Princess pantheon.  Still, this could create an excellent opportunity to introduce students to some of the not-as-well-known fairy tales.

Yolen and Dotlich use a framing strategy to open and close the book.  The poem "Once" appears just after the endpapers at the beginning, and "Happily Ever After" closes the book before the endpapers at the end.  It's a clever way to begin and end the book, especially because Yolen wrote one of the poems and Dotlich wrote the other.  "Once" trots out all the tropes of a typical fairy tale, establishing the foundation of fairy tales in general and the themes of the poems to follow.  It says,

A girl, princess, mermaid, widow, witch, queen, wife,
A boy, king, solider, wizard, troll, giant,
....................................................................................
The tale turns, returns, confesses, confuses,
And all the hardships, spells, and stresses
End well in happy laughter
And we hope --
                        ever after. (Yolen 2013, 1)

"Happily Ever After" asks the readers to consider what happens "after all the plotting, after the ball, / after the spelling, / hopping, / sweeping, / grumping, grousing, mopping, sleeping, / from small glass shoe to nuisance pea (Dotlich 2013, 40).  Using those two poems to open and close the device is an elegant use of the device, not only because of their placement outside of the body of the book itself, but because they introduce the concept behind the book and conclude it by inviting readers to imagine the lives of fairy tale characters after the final page is turned.  Also, because Dotlich and Yolen each contribute one poem to every fairy tale they feature in the book, it should also follow that they each contribute a poem to the frame around the book.

Yolen and Dotlich don't go into much figurative language in their poems here.  They do rely on well-chosen adjectives and phrasing in order to convey meaning and emotion.  One of the best examples of this is in the two Beauty and the Beast poems, "Beauty's Daydream" and "Beauty and the Beast: An Anniversary."  In Dotlich's (2013) "Beauty's Daydream," she repeats certain words and phrases, like 'dream,' or 'dreaming' to emphasize all the wonderful things mentioned in the poem, like dancing, pink flowers in her hair, roses, and valentines only reside in her dreams (12).  Dotlich (2013) also repeats the phrase, "If I could" twice to illustrate the longing Beauty feels for her dreams and reality she faces in the Beasts "fangs, his roar" (12).  Yolen's "Beauty and the Beast: An Anniversary" is achingly poignant, due to the structure and word choice.  In it, an older Beauty narrates her supposedly happily ever after:

My father died last April;
my sisters no longer write
except at the turnings of the year,
content with their fine houses,
and their grandchildren.
.....................................................
Though sometimes I do wonder
what sounds children
might have made
running across the marble halls (Yolen 2013, 13)

By placing just a bit of Beauty's thoughts on each line, Yolen lets them stand alone so the reader has a moment to contemplate how many years have passed (her father's death and sisters' diminished communications) and her, at least to me, well-buried regret at never having children.  Yolen also uses language to give Cinderella a rueful tone in "Shoes."  Cinderella says, "I could have danced / all night in wooden clogs / or easy-peasy / runners" (Yolen 2013, 16).  Yolen uses the poem to mention all the different shoes Cinderella is supposed to have worn in different versions of Cinderella, and highlight how much more suitable they would be for dancing, as opposed to the glass shoes she did wear "that cut [her] feet to slivers" (Yolen 2013, 16).  Dotlich also uses the word choice to illustrate the metamorphosis the Little Mermaid underwent in "A Mermaid's Love."  The young mermaid changes her "fins to legs / arms to wings" as detailed in the Hans Christian Anderson tale, and Dotlich neatly summarizes the entire story with a few well-chosen words (Dotlich 2013, 19).  The quote follows her transformation from mermaid to human to a spirit drifting as foam upon the sea.  Dotlich uses short phrasing in "Little Red's Story" to denote the excitement Red feels during her inadvertent adventure when she discovers the Big Bad Wolf at her grandmother's house.  Similarly, Yolen's (2013) "About Grandma Wolf" is a short poem, in which the lines "Was I fooled? / Not a bit." carry the smug certainty of a child who knows she was right (31).  It's a short, triumphant 'HA!' of a poem.

Yolen and Dotlich also use memorable rhythm in their poems.  In "Jack," a poem delving into Jack and the Beanstalk,  Yolen appropriates two well-known nursery rhymes ("Jack Be Nimble" and "Rock-a-Bye Baby") for the rhythm of the poem.  Yolen uses "Jack Be Nimble" for the first stanza to parallel the other Jack's agility in bringing down the beanstalk.  The second stanza echoes the line in "Rock-a-Bye Baby" that says "Down will come baby / cradle and all" by describing the giant falling "Bottoms up in a crater, / Thus ending it all" (Yolen 2013, 21).  The rhythm of Yolen's "Gruff for Dinner", a poem written from the point-of-view of the troll in The Three Billy Goats Gruff reminds the reader of a man rubbing his hands together in anticipation of a good dinner.  The rhythm is so well thought-out, it might make an interesting exercise for a music class to set it to music.

Several poems have a rhyme scheme that draws attention to events, plot points, or a narrator's thought process.  in Yolen's (2013) "Gretel Spies the Magic House," the last four lines are written in an alternating rhyme scheme that draws a reader's mental eye from the house to the fence and the realization that things aren't going to end well:

We should have...
Taken the hint
From the marzipan bricks
And the fence posts made of bone rubble.
But it as only when we saw the witch
That we knew we were in deep, deep trouble. (10)

Dotlich's "A Mermaid's Love" also employs rhyme where the rhyming words are significant to the story and the emotional impact.  Dotlich also effectively uses rhyme in "The Pea Episode" (The Princess and the Pea).  The stanzas are a series of couplets, but the second line rhymes with the first line of the next stanza.  It helps tie events from the previous stanza to the next one.  Dotlich also uses a bit of internal rhyme within the individual lines of "Troll Lament" (The Three Billy Goats Gruff).  It certainly lends the poem a nice rhythm: "Whoosh! He pushed, / leaving me to shiver in the river. / No snack, no scrap" (Dotlich 2013, 33).

Both Dotlich and Yolen use a poetry form in order to reflect their subject matter.  The two poems about Thumbelina are both short poem formats -- cinquain and haiku.  Two short poems for "a bit / Of a proper young lady" (Yolen 2013, 35).

The two poems that highlight The Three Bears use fonts to reflect the different characters: Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear, Officer Bruin, and Goldilocks.  In Yolen's (2013) "Three Bears, Five Voices," Papa Bear's font is printed in all caps, which mimics irate roaring, while Mama Bear's is an emphatic, but quieter, italic.  Baby Bear's smaller font makes the reader hear a younger voice in their head.  Goldilocks' font is a loopy, cursive font that perfectly fits Goldilocks' flighty nature.  Officer Bruin's plain, no-frills font communicates a tone of calm competence.  The same font used for Goldilocks in this poem is also used in Dotlich's "Goldilocks Leaves a Letter Stuck in the Door."  The font fits the frivolous nature of Goldilocks, who basically says, 'sorry, not sorry' in her letter, claiming,

I was minding my own business,
napping on the just-right bed,
when suddenly
those three growly ones showed up;
..........................................................
You'd think it was their house. (Dotlich 2013, 37).

In a couple of poems, Dotlich and Yolen also repeat phrases that emphasis the emotional content or reflect the often-conflicting nature of some of the fairy tale plots.  In "Just One Pea," Yolen (2013) repeats in the voice of the pea under the mattress, "I miss my dear pod, / My peeps and my peers... / I miss my dear pod, / And my seven green peers" (22).  It neatly illustrates the loneliness felt by the solitary pea, hiding under a pile of mattresses.  The best use of a refrain is in "Who Told the Lie?"  Each stanza ends with the same three lines: "Who told the lie? / 'Not I!' / 'Not I!'" (Yolen 2013, 24).  The poem cycles through each character in Rumplestiltskin, in a Rashomon-esque fashion, with each character telling their version of events.  In the end, who is telling the truth and who is lying?  Yolen doesn't say, and it's up to the reader to decide.

There are poems that will appeal to readers of all ages.  Some will appeal to more mature readers, like the Beauty and the Beast poems, but others, like The Princess and the Pea poems will appeal to younger readers.  This is a great book to have when you have a wide range of ages that use your library or have students who know a lot about fairy tales or have just received an introduction to them.

The poems are often succinct, wry retellings of the fairy tales or speculative peeks into what happened after the fairy tale ends.  In many cases, they may be emotional, but not saccharine-sweet or so sentimental that children or young adult readers will be turned off by the feelings in the poems.  Most of the poems are charming reflections of their source material.  The one or two that don't quite work are still good, and the reasons they don't quite work are minor, like a slightly abrupt ending.  Yolen and Dotlich are skilled poets, and their work here demonstrates this.

Matt Mahurin's illustrations range from surreal to dark and foreboding to luminous.  The illustrations cover the two-page spread devoted to both poems.  The more emotionally complex poems have muted illustrations that reflect the emotional state of the poems.  Some of the more comic or emotionally light poems have illustrations that are bright and airy, keeping with the tone of the poetry.    The cover art for the book is fantastic.  It's a dark, slightly scary forest, that has different elements from the fairy tales featured in the book scattered among the tree trunks.  A glass slipper sits in the middle of a path in the forest, surrounded by scattered candies.  It might be fun for students to identify the different fairy tales hinted at in the cover illustrations.

Writing twisted or updated fairy tales has been quite popular.  There are tons of novelizations that reexamine fairy tales from Yolen's contribution to the Tor Fairy Tale series, Briar Rose, to Gail Carson Levine's Newbery Honor book Ella Enchanted.  I suppose one of the reasons fairy tales are so easily updated, fractured, or twisted is due to their universality.  Nearly every culture as a version of many fairy tales, like Cinderella or Thumbelina, so this book can appeal to many readers.  Get this book for your library.  Promote it to students so they can read it.  Coax teachers into using if they do any sort of unit that involves fairy tales.  Encourage people to take Yolen and Dotlich's advice in the introduction that says, "Why not try writing fairy-tale poems yourself?  Pick a character or an object...  Imagine.  Enchant.  Write a poem that rewrites the tale.  Make a little magic" (Yolen and Dotlich 2013, 5).

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Spotlight on...

"Happily Ever After" 

Imagine them all
after the plotting, after the ball,
after the spelling, hopping, sweeping,
grumping, grousing, mopping, sleeping,
from small glass shoe to nuisance pea,
so ever after, all happily be --
enchanted with magic
from kingdoms
to seas
Now close your eyes,
and dream of these.
-- Rebecca Kai Dotlich (2013, 40)

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It seems a little easy to choose this poem as the gateway to an enrichment activity, but this makes twice in the book Yolen and Dotlich have exhorted their readers to use fairy tales as a springboard into creating their own poetry.

Students will be able to choose a fairy tale from any culture, and using Yolen and Dotlich's advice, choose a character, either main or background, or an object integral to the action of the poem, and  write their own poem about the action before, during, or after the fairy tale.  Students can use poetry forms, if they find they need a framework to get started.  They can use acrostics, biopoems, found poetry, list poems, or question poems.  Students can opt to do concrete poems (imagine doing one as Cinderella's shoe!) or epitaph or elegy poems.  If students feel so inclined, they can use a program like Storybird to inspire or illustrate their poems.  It would be fun to post students' poems (with their permission, of course!) around the school.

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Works Cited

Yolen, Jane and Rebecca Kai Dotlich. 2013. Grumbles from the Forest: Fairy-Tale Voices with a Twist. Illustrated by Matt Mahurin. Honesdale, PA: WordSong.

'Walking On Earth and Touching the Sky: Poetry and Prose by Lakota Youth at Red Cloud Indian School' edited by Timothy P. McLaughlin, Illustrated by S.D. Nelson (LS 5663)

McLaughlin, Timothy P., ed. 2012. Walking On Earth and Touching the Sky: Poetry and Prose by Lakota Youth at Red Cloud Indian School. Illustrated by S.D. Nelson. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers.

ISBN: 978-4197-0179-5

Cover Image From:
www.abramsbooks.com

In the introduction to the anthology Walking On Earth and Touching the Sky: Poetry and Prose by Lakota Youth at Red Cloud Indian School, Timothy P. McLaughlin gives a brief history of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the location of Red Cloud Indian School.  McLaughlin also discusses the myriad difficulties facing the children who attend the school and live on the reservation: severe poverty, addiction, substandard housing, violence, and high levels of unemployment.  Life, Laughlin (2012) notes, is difficult, but there is "a tremendous love for the land, a system of profound cultural ways, a sense of community that often supersedes the struggles, and a capacity for humor...and a source of joy" (12).  This particular collection of writings came from McLaughlin's (2012) experiences teaching writing and reading to grades five through eight over a three-year period (13).  What follows on the pages of the book are over one hundred brief reflections written in poetry and prose about how the children in McLaughlin's class at Red Cloud view themselves, their world, and their place within it.

McLaughlin divides the book between seven different themes: Natural World; Misery; Native Thoughts; Silence; Spirit; Family, Youth, and Dreams; and Language.  McLaughlin also includes a brief introduction for each theme and how it informs the students' writing.  The writings contained in each section are reflections on that theme.  Some of the poems are written in free verse, while others follow a more structured format.  Some of the prose is so lyrically composed, that it might as well be poetry, and I wonder how the book might have turned out differently if McLaughlin had worked with some of those pieces to try and go that extra step that would take it into poetry.

Many of the poems are written as list poems.  They appear in every theme of the book, and cover a variety of subjects.  In the section "Nature," Jessie Star Comes Out wrote a list poem about the sun, titled "The Sun."  It's short, but displays a fantastic understanding of the sun and its place in the universe.  Another effective list poem is J.J. Wilson's "Misery."  He lists all the small and large indignities he's suffered and seen others suffer as stereotypes crush their identity.  Andrew Herman also wrote a list poem titled "Misery" where his last two lines contain two "Indian misery is..." statements.  Structurally, it emphasizes the hopelessness Andrew sees in his world.  Kayla Matthews allows her poem "Misery" to illustrate the effect of addiction on the community.

Often, the list poems contain a great deal of figurative language in the form of metaphor or simile.  Julian Bear Runner's poem "Racism" demonstrates this with his striking choice of words.  Julian says, "Racism is like a gun in a child's hands / loaded with all the words a devil would say" (Bear Runner 2012, 31).  Dusty Black Elk uses metaphor in his list poem "Who Am I" to illustrate the feelings of alienation he feels.  The poem says,

I am a football player at a basketball game.
I am a cat with a bunch of dogs...
I am an angel around a bunch of devils.
I am a Walkman at a rock concert.
I am a block that tries to fit into a circle. (Black Elk 2012, 62).  

Other types of poems and prose excerpts offer beautiful uses of language to evoke an image.  Carmen Fourd's "Dawn" offers a dreamy depiction of the sunrise as "beautiful with pink, blue, and yellow all spreading like watercolors" (Fourd 2012, 18).  It's a simple, yet effective use of a simile, because who hasn't played with one of those sets of watercolor paints you can find in the arts and crafts aisle of the local big box store (or even the local five-and-dime) and watched the colors blend and spread as you painted on a piece of paper?  One poem, "Metaphor," by Clementine Boucheaux (2012), simply contains five lines of metaphor about nature, including the introspective phrase "stars are pieces of memory" (23).  Another astute turn of phrase is in Jon Decker's "Writing."  He says, "Writing is like flowing water... a constant stream of ideas being transformed into letters and words" (Decker 2012, 70).  Jon's piece is one of those written prose that could have easily been transformed into poetry, due to the strength of its use of language and imagery with just a little coaxing and revision.  Stephanie Sully offers a lovely reflection titled "Dreams of the Babies" with lush adjectives that make you see pink cheeks and swear the aroma of talcum powder is in the air.  Stephanie begins with

Young, sweet innocent souls dreaming of they came to be.  Sleeping in their beds with the moon, stars, sun, and clouds hanging over their heads.  Hate, jealousy, envy, racism, and sin revolving in the world, but they have no clue of it.  They just know when to smile, cry, laugh, and play. (Sully 2012, 66).  

This is another prose piece that I thought could have been easily nudged into poetry with some instructor-led guidance.

Some of the poems use other literary devices.  Larissa Ross' poem "Nature" uses personification to depict her narrator engaging Mother Nature in a conversation about the environmental devastation she sees.  It's also an interesting parallel to the cultural devastation of Aboriginal people.  Kathy McLaughlin's (2012) "Still I Cry" employs a refrain of "Still I cry" at the end of each stanza to encompass the collective sorrow at decades of of racism and mistreatment (32).  Rayleen Bickerstaff also uses refrain in her poem "Still I'm Loved."  Rayleen discusses the concept of unconditional love by describing all the terrible things she (or anyone) could do that would alienate her family or defile her community, but as her refrain states at the end of each line, "still I'm loved" (Bickerstaff 2012, 60).  Walker Thompson's "Despair" uses rhymed couplets to highlight certain characteristics.  Walker expresses a desire to "be like my dad, who is unafraid. / He is sharper than a razor blade" (Thompson 2012, 31).  Kathy McLaughlin also uses rhymed couplets in her poem "Tradition" to tie the ideas in the lines together.

One of the more sophisticated uses of poetic structure is David Wolfe's "The Battle," a historically-themed poem written from the point-of-view of a Lakota warrior fighting against European and American incursions on their land.  It consists of three stanzas, each four lines long with rhymed couplets.  The poem is a micro-story, a small nugget of an event with a clear beginning, middle, and end.  David manages to combine pride and a warrior's fierce spirit with an almost fatalistic acknowledgement that the warrior might not survive this battle.  Another emotionally complex piece of writing is Derrick McCauley's "Silence."  It's technically an example of prose, but Derrick's language describing how he felt when his mother presumable died makes you feel all the sound being sucked out of the room.  He says, "It was like I was on a beach and all I could hear were the waves coming onto the land" (McCauley 2012, 49).  So even without saying so explicitly, Derrick recalls the  sensation that hearing the blood roar in your ears from a traumatic personal event.  One of the other emotionally complex poems in this collection belongs to Kayla Matthews and her poem "Faith."  She describes a concept of home that doesn't rely on a physical place, but rather a spiritual location that relies on her faith in her community.

The book is illustrated with vibrant paintings by S.D. Nelson, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux. One painting accompanies the introduction for each section that also aligns with the theme of the section.  The paintings themselves are lovely meditations on the theme of the section.  Most of the paintings are done in acrylic, but there are a few in colored pencils.  The use of acrylic allows Nelson to create dynamic images that glow on the page.  They are lovely additions to the book.

The book includes several access features.  It has a table of contents, which lists the sections, like chapters.  It also has two indices, one which lists the tiles and their page numbers, and the other lists all the writers in the book.  Both of these indices also list the page numbers on which the poems or particular writers appear.  Nelson's paintings also have captions that contain the details of the painting or drawing (title, medium, size) and a line or two of poetry.  The captions also give an explanation of the themes or symbols in the paintings provided by Nelson.

The poems and prose are generally thought provoking and offer a unique window into the life of a group of children and young teenagers who navigate between their traditional world and the modern one, some with more success than others.  Several of the poems display a sense of resilience and defiance necessary for survival against terrible odds.  Some of the poems demonstrate a delicate and deft use of words, while others explore complex and deeply felt emotions.  Some of the poems are less well-thought out than others, and there are many prose pieces that should (in my opinion) have been transformed into poetry, as demonstrated by Georgia Heard's For the Good of the Earth and Sun: Teaching Poetry.  All those particular pieces would have needed were a few minor adjustments in phrasing and structure.  Still, the overall quality of the work is quite good, especially when you consider these are still young children.  Well, young, perhaps chronologically, but based on the words in these pages, it just proves that age can indeed be just a number.

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Spotlight on...

"Misery" 

Indian misery is when somebody takes you land.
Indian misery is when somebody kills your friends.
Indian misery is when your people turn against you.
Indian misery is being slaves to people.
Indian misery is being locked up in jail.
Indian misery is people killing your food for money.
Indian misery is fighting. Indian misery is no peace.
Indian misery is when you get killed. Indian misery is if you lose the fight.
-- Andrew Herman (2012, 29)

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One of the highlights of the revised BC curriculum is the integration of Aboriginal subjects and content into the curriculum.  With the initial findings of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigation into the abuses perpetuated in the residential school system published in 2012, this poem makes a perfect gateway into a unit about the issues facing Aboriginal people today. Many of the issues Andrew brings up in his poem can be directly traced to the policies of the US and Canadian federal and state/provincial governments regarding their Aboriginal populations.  As a form of formative assessment, it might be an interesting exercise to have students write poems based on what they've learned.

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Works Cited

Heard, Georgia. 1989. For the Good of the Earth and Sun: Teaching Poetry. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

McLaughlin, Timothy P., ed. 2012. Walking On Earth and Touching the Sky: Poetry and Prose by Lakota Youth at Red Cloud Indian School. Illustrated by S.D. Nelson. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers.

'Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto' by Paul B. Janeczko (LS 5663)

Janeczko, Paul B. 2011. Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

ISBN: 978-0-7636-4727-8 (hardcover)

Cover image from
www.candlewick.com

The Theresienstadt Ghetto became infamous for the lengths the Nazi government would go to in order to convince the world that its Jewish inmates were being well-treated.  As Paul B. Janeczko (2011) notes in his afterword, the ghetto was mostly populated at first by the artists and intellectuals of Prague, but by the end of World War II, over 140, 000 Jews entered Theresienstadt's gates, but most of them were eventually transported to Auschwitz or Treblinka, where they were gassed.  Ironically, the Nazis permitted, and even encouraged the Jewish prisoners to perform concerts and operas or deliver lectures.  When the Red Cross performed an inspection of Theresienstadt, the Nazis created a Potemkin village, showcasing how the Jews were treated for their inspectors and cameras.  Behind the curtains, however, it was a tale of despair, starvation, cruelty, torture, and abuse.  Janeczko's collection of poems, Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto, written in the voices of various prisoners and their captors, reveal the human face that is so often lost in the overwhelming enormity of the Holocaust.


Each poem is written from the point-of-view of a different person in Theresienstadt, so we get a variety of perspectives, from young children to older adults to members of the SS running the camp.  The characters, as Janeczko (2011) notes in his notes at the end of the book are largely fictional: "Some are composites based on [his] research.  Others are totally invented.  One exception is "Valter Eisinger/11956," a found poem taken from letters written by Eisinger, which [he] located in We Are Children Just the Same" (93).  As such, each poem is titled with the name of the narrator, or in a few cases, the name of the subject of the poem.  The Jewish prisoners' poems also contain their prisoner numbers.  To poems are arranged in chronological order, so the first poem takes place as the Nazis began to arrest and transport Jews from their homes to the concentration camps and ghettos, and the last few poems reflect the efforts by the Nazis to liquidate the ghetto and transport its prisoners to Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

Janeczko doesn't often use a great deal of figurative language once the narrative moves into the ghetto, which seems appropriate, given the subject matter.  In other works of literature I've read that depict a similar subject matter (Ruta Sepetys' Between Shades of Gray), the lack of figurative language allows the horror of the situation to become the focus of the text, rather than the language.  It also demonstrates that while figurative language has a place in poetry, sometimes all the poet needs is to let the ideas, feelings, and emotions speak for themselves.  Still, Janeczko uses figurative language when it would have the most impact.  It's quite startling to see the liberal use of simile and metaphor to describe a family's arrest to the last poems that have little to no figurative language at all.  It's as if the narrator of that particular poem has been ground down by the constant pain, hunger, and fear to the point where their mind is no longer capable of processing anything beyond its most concrete thoughts.  In "Margit Zadock/13597," Janeczko uses figurative language to describe the feeling of utter shock and disbelief at the family's arrest.  Margit describes her father as being "still as a lamppost / eyes locked on the nightmare / that had been his shop" (Janeczko 2011, 1).  Janeczko also has Margit juxtapose an exquisite image with a more desolate one to provide an immediate contrast to illustrate the sudden change in the family's circumstance.  Margit describes "Delicate handkerchiefs / now fallen white leaves" and "A white linen tablecloth... / flowed like a bride's train / from sidewalk to curb to gutter" (Janeczko 2011, 1; 2).  The enormity of the situation drops on Margit and her family when they see "black boot marks / crossing [the tablecloth] like sins" (Janeczko 2011, 2).  Janeczko (2011) uses metaphor to effectively evoke the image of hundreds of people moving from the trains into the ghetto in "Marie Jelinek/17789:" we joined the river of fear, / a current of shuffling feet, sobs, and whimpers (8).  It's not hard to create a mental image of raging fright and simmering hysteria.  In "Tomasz Kassenwitz/11850," Janeczko details the disintegration of a long friendship between Tomasz and Willi, who is not Jewish.  Tomasz describes how Willi reluctantly severs their friendship, where the absence of words and movement depicts how painful this forced separation truly is.  Janeczko (2011) writes, "He picked up the white king / then laid it softly on its side" (14).  The act of gently positioning the king into the pose that symbolizes checkmate, a loss, is elegiac in its simplicity.

A dual-voice poem, "SS Commandant Manfred Brandt & SS Sergeant Dieter Hoffmann," uses a rhythm that conjures both the musicality of the German language and the more familiar short, abrupt patterns of the language.  (Yes, spoken German can have a lyrical quality to it that is often obscured by the stereotypical harsh staccato shouts that have been seared into our collective memory.)  The short phrases spoken by Hoffmann exemplify the conventional brutish sounds of German, while also voicing contempt for Brandt's methods of keeping the Jews under control.  Hoffmann complains, "The Jews are playing music. / In the attics. Basements" (Janeczko 2011, 29).  Brandt brings Hoffmann to see his point of view, that allowing the Jews to play music maintains an illusion that they still have a measure of control over their fates and will minimize the chance for rebellion against their captors.  Brandt says,

So, let the Jews play their music, Dieter.
In fact, we will do what we can --
within reason, of course --
to assist...
Because, Dieter, the day will come
for all of them
when there will be no more music. (Janeczko 2011, 31)

The contrast between the rhythm of Hoffmann's staccato voice and Brandt's more lyrical one also reflects their philosophical differences.  In the poem, Janeczko uses their two voices to effectively  illustrate the logic employed by Kommandant Brandt to justify his actions, and to provide the questions under the voice of Sergeant Hoffmann that lead to the rationale.

One of the best examples of using white space and line breaks to help set the tone is "Hilda Bartes."  The poem is narrated from the point-of-view of a resident of the town of Terezin.  As Hilda begins to describe the town, she lists what she felt were its good qualities: "Quiet. / Isolated" (Janeczko 2011, 33).  The very qualities that made Terezin a good town in Hilda's estimation were also what made it an appealing location for a Jewish ghetto.  Placing the terms 'quiet' and 'isolation' on separate lines allows the reader to pause to let those two words meld in order to create an image of an idyllic valley.  The white space between stanzas signals a shift as the situation grows darker and more grim.

In "Josefine Rabsky/10890," Janeczko ends each stanza with the means by which a person left Theresienstadt.  Most of them list the transport that took them away to a concentration camp, and their likely death.  Two of the stanzas end with a death from disease or suicide.  It's a powerful refrain, and the relentless mentions of the transports evokes the relentlessness of death and dying.

Even with over twenty-five separate characters, Janeczko manages to make each voice sound unique in Requiem.  The irony nearly drips off the page in "SS Lieutenant Theodor Lang," who scoffs at the Red Cross inspection, but details all the 'improvements' to the ghetto so they can placate the Red Cross and the king of Denmark before he cynically remarks that, "We waited a few months / to resume the transports. / The town was getting crowded / and the ovens of Auschwitz waited" (Janeczko 2011, 58).  "Nicolas Krava/21389" sets a tone of stoic resignation as it details how delightful Nicolas was in the children's opera Brundibár, but his number came up just days after his stellar performance, and they replaced him as his transport "clattered toward death" (Janeczko 2011, 69).

The poems might not be entirely relatable to children and teenagers reading them today, but they are compelling.  The inclusion of poems written in the voices of the Terezin townspeople and the SS members running the ghetto means that students will gain a multi-faceted  perspective of the life in Terezin.  Janeczko avoids mawkishness, which is a definite skill when writing about a deeply emotional subject.  The sentiment present in the poems, such as that displayed in "Wilifred Becker/34507," comes from an authentic place, as Wilifred describes how he played his violin for a married couple spending their last hours together before the husband is taken away on a transport.  Janeczko also avoids using overly frilly language, letting the narrators of the poems simply describe what is happening to them.  The events are terrible enough without having to rely on a great deal of figurative language.

Janeczko also uses subtle hints throughout his poetry that national or cultural origin was not enough to shield one from the machinations of the Third Reich.  The narrator of "Hilda Bartes" mentions how they were commanded to leave their house in order to accommodate "the Führer's historic vision" (Janeczko 2011, 35).  Wilfred, upon hearing a request to play Johann Strauss for the couple smiles, and replies, "I am German, and I not?" (Janeczko 2011, 76).

Janeczko includes several drawings from Theresienstadt prisoners: Karel Fleischmann, Ferdinand Bloch, Bedrock Fritta, and Fritz Lederer.  The drawings seem to have been done in charcoal, graphite, or ink.  They are striking, but they're not entirely necessary to the book.  They do serve to connect the real people who were in Theresiestadt to Janeczko's fictional narrators, though.  However, I feel that the book would have been just as successful if the drawings were not in the book.

There are several access features in the book.  There is a table of contents, which I find helpful in verse novels or novellas, especially when you have a work with multiple characters like this.  Janeczko also includes an afterword that fleshes out some of the details about Theresienstadt the poems don't cover.  In the author's note, Janeczko talks about the origins of some of his narrators and some of the events he describes in the poems.  He reiterates that while the Red Cross inspection actually happened and the 'improvements' as described by Lieutenant Lang were real, Lang's words are "products of [his] imagination" (Janeczko 2011, 93).  Janeczko (2011) also mentions that as part of his research, he visited Terezin and the memorial and museums.  Janeczko includes a list of selected sources that includes several books and websites and a couple of DVDs.  He also includes a glossary of German and Czech words used in the text, translated into English.

It might make an interesting exercise to compare the poems of Janeczko with the compilation of poems and artwork by children who were in Theresienstadt called I Never Saw Another Butterfly, edited by Hana Volakova.  Not only would Requiem make an excellent resource for a history or humanities class studying the Holocaust, it adds another voice for students in Judaica classes engaging in a deeper study of the Holocaust.

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Spotlight on...

"Otto Black"

The Jews are weak.
They let the soldiers push them around.
I would never permit that,
not without throwing some punches.
That I know. (Janeczko 2011, 65).

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The poetry in Requiem is often thought-provoking, make no mistake, and one poem, "Otto Beck," can help open discussion.  In it, Otto declares, that he would not have allowed himself to be arrested and transported to the ghetto or a concentration camp.

When I was teaching, especially with some middle grade students, they would often make the same sort of statement as Otto.  This might be an interesting poem to open a unit about the Holocaust.  Once the students learn more, the class can revisit the poem and their feelings.  After knowing more about the systemic violence perpetuated against the Jews in Nazi Germany, and the Warsaw Ghetto uprisings, both by the Jews and Polish Resistance fighters, would those students still feel that they could have successfully fought back, as Otto claimed?

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Works Cited

Janeczko, Paul B. 2011. Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

"Poems to Learn by Heart" edited by Caroline Kennedy, Paintings by Jon J. Muth (LS 5663)

Kennedy, Caroline, ed. 2013. Poems to Learn by Heart. Illustrated by Jon J. Muth. New York: Disney Hyperion.

ISBN: 978-4231-0805-4

Cover image from
www.npr.org

In the introduction to Poems to Learn by Heart, Caroline Kennedy mentions that her family routinely recited poetry and as a child she was required to memorize poetry in school.  Kennedy (2013) extols the virtues of memorizing poetry and how it can create an emotional connection with the reader (10).  What follows is a collection of 115 poems, ranging from selections from the Bible and ancient Greek poets to William Shakespeare and Ben Johnson to Alfred, Lord Tennyson to e.e. cummings to Langston Hughes to Nikki Giovanni and Janet S. Wong.  Needless to say, there's quite a range of poetry between the covers of this book.  Some is more readily accessible than others, and there are a few choices that aren't necessarily poetry, but have a poetic turn of phrase.  Accompanying the poems are Jon J. Muth's lush watercolors.  Some paintings are small illustrations, while others treat the page as a canvas, with the text of the poetry superimposed on the artwork.  Overall, I found it to be a fine collection of poems, with something to offer a wide range of ages, with a few minor (depending on your opinion) quibbles.

Kennedy divides the poems into categories based on themes.  This particular collection contains: poems about self and identify, family, friendship and love, mythical creatures, nonsensical, school, sports and games, war, and nature.  Each section has a brief introduction by Kennedy that offers her thoughts on the particular theme, as well as a few details about some of the poems in the section.  Kennedy also includes a short "Extra Credit" section that has four longer poems, such as "Paul Revere's Ride" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee."  The book also has helpful access features: a table of contents, an index of the poets, and an index of the first lines.

The poems display a wide variety of figurative language, but the ones that jump out the most are metaphor, simile, and personification.  Gary Soto's "Ode to Pablo's Tennis Shoes" parallels Pablo's day with those of his beloved (and well-worn) tennis shoes.  Soto (2013) describes Pablo drifting off to sleep, while his shoes rest with their "tongues hanging / Out, exhausted" (25).  Katherine Pyle's "The Toys Talk of the World" will resonate with fans of Toy Story, as the read about a group of objects wistfully wonder what the outside world must be like.  Ogden Nash's "The Tale of Custard the Dragon" skillfully employs figurative language to describe the cast of characters in this longer poem about Belinda and her black kitten Ink, gray mouse Blink, yellow dog Mustard, and the cowardly dragon Custard.  Nash (2013) describes them as being "brave as a tiger" or "brave as a barrel-full of bears," while Custard has a "mouth like a fireplace" (95).  What truly makes this poem a delight to read is the description of Custard, who is covered in spikes and scales, but desperately "cries for a nice safe cage" (97).  Some of the poems offer a play on words, like William Cole's "Foolish Questions" and Richard Wilbur's "Some Words Inside of Words."  Cole's "Foolish Questions" takes on the silliness and confusion of the English language and some of its homonyms.  Cole asks, "Where can a man buy a cap for his knee? / Or a key for the lock of his hair? / And can his eyes be called a school? / I would think -- there are pupils there!" (86).   It would make a wonderful poem to introduce English Language Learners to the baffling world of homonyms and homophones.  In "Some Words Inside of Words," Wilbur manages to find words inside longer words and somehow associate them with the parent word.  For example he says, "In a flower bed, the ranks of bright-faced plants / Look like a choir that's singing hymns... / We find an anthem in chrysanthemum" (94).

Kennedy has chosen poems that do have a lot of rhythm.  In "Disobedience" by A. A. Milne (2013), the rhythm is created by the repetition of specific words and phrases, such as, "James James / Morrison Morrison / Weatherly George Dupree" (38).  It sounds as if the reader is hopping up and down on their toes.  It's also helped by the syllabic structure of the line "Weatherly George Dupree" with the multi-syllabic Weatherly, followed by the staccato George, and then the elongated sounds of Dupree that make it sound as if the reader's voice is doing hopscotch (Milne 2013, 38).  "Someone" by Walter de la Mare contains a series of short words that mimics the sounds of someone knocking on the door, as the poem is about someone knocking on an elf's tiny door.  Alfred, Lord Tennyson's (2013) famous "Charge of the Light Brigade" repeats the phrases "Cannon to the right of them, / Cannon to the left of them, / Cannon in front of them / Volly'd and thunder'd" (143).  It conjures up an image of young men surrounded by cannon fire, and the repeated use of "cannon" reinforces the idea that they were indeed surrounded.  One of the best uses of a poetic structure's rhythm is in Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool."  Brooks places the first line of the next statement on the same line as the previous statement.  It allows the reader to pause, to draw attention to the "we," before moving on to the activities performed by this group.

We real cool. We
Left school. We 

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We 

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We 

Jazz June. We
Die soon.  (Brooks 2013, 119).

The stanza breaks demarcate the growing intensity of the young men's activities.  Giving the reader the ability (and permission!) to pause, lets the progression from leaving school to participating in potentially violent activities to their inevitable death sink into the audience.  Perhaps being cool isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Some of the poems have an definitive rhyme structure, as seen in "Song of the Ogres" by W. H. Auden.  In this poem, Auden employs a rhyme scheme of AABCCB for each stanza, which lends it a slightly heroic air, if you could imagine a Broadway style male chorus singing it.  Just try saying the last stanza aloud:

Always hopeful, aren't you? Don't be.
Night is falling and it won't be
      Long now:
You will never see the dawn,
You will wish you'd not been born,
      And how!  (Auden 2013, 82)

"Under the Bed" by Penny Trzunka (2013), where every other line rhymes, often draws attention to the unexpected turn the poem takes when the bemused narrator says the monster, "taps me on the shoulder / I don't know what to do. / He looks at me and says, 'I'm scared! / Can I get in with you?" (78).  Jeff Moss employs rhymed couplets in "If Little Red Riding Hood..." that helps tie the two lines together.  This starts with the very first lines: "If Little Red Riding Hood had a dad, / Perhaps things wouldn't have turned out so bad" (Moss 2013, 43).

Kennedy also did an excellent job curating poems that examine topics students will study in school.  "Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall should become a regular addition to a school's African-American History Month program.  It places an human face on the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and gives the event an emotional context, instead of an event on a timeline.  William Blake's "Poison Tree" would be great to use with a group of students learning anger management techniques to introduce healthy and responsible ways to express their anger.  It can also be used in a psychology class to open a discussion about suppressed anger.  Janet S. Wong's wonderfully descriptive "Liberty" would be a great means to introduce the concept of a pluralistic government in a civics class.  "Shiloh" by Herman Melville talks about the aftermath of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, which makes it an excellent source to use in a US History class about to begin a unit on the Civil War.

Kennedy also pairs several poems together well.  "Brother" by Mary Ann Doberman and "Brother and Sister" by Lewis Carroll perfectly illustrate the concept of sibling rivalry.  Elizabeth Bishop's "Manners" partners excellently with and excerpt from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's A Drama of Exile as they both deal with how we reap the benefits of kindness and manners.  The playful "Under the Bed" and "What's That?" by Florence Parry Heide both deal with the fear young children might feel when contemplating the monsters under their bed.

Several poems are eminently relatable to children.  Most of them are in the section about school.  Kennedy's (2013) introduction mentions the "strain of silent rebellion [that] runs through the genre" (99).  Who among us didn't at some point feel a wee bit of passive-aggressive rebellion in a classroom? Jane Yolen's (2013) "Homework" wryly notes, "What is it about homework? / That makes me pick up socks / That stink from days of wear, / Then clean the litter box?" (103).  Students of all ages know how it feels to have homework looming over your head, but somehow even the task of cleaning out the cats' litter box is much more appealing.  In this day and age of constant high-stakes testing, Janet S. Wong's "Bubble Troubles" accurately describes the anxiety felt by students when they make a mistake on the all-important bubble sheet.  Galway Kinnell's "Hide-and-Seek, 1933" delves into the mind of a child who has finally triumphed at hide-and-seek.  Robert Louis Stevenson's "Block City" describes the joy felt at building a city of wooden building blocks, and the fleeting joy at knocking it over.  Girls will relate to Nikki Giovanni's "The Girls in the Circle" with its depiction of a typical slumber party, with the elaborate makeovers, and nowhere to show them off.  Fans of Breaking Bad might also appreciate the poem "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which also happened to be the title of the last episode of the series.  They would be able to easily pick up the parallels of the fallen statue of a king to the fallen empire of Walter White.

I would be remiss if I didn't elaborate on Muth's gorgeous artwork.  Muth, a 2006 Caldecott honouree for Zen Shorts, deftly illustrates the themes or tones of the poetry.  The illustrations range from richly detailed, such as the one that accompanies "The Secret Sits," Hide-and-Seek, 1933," and "Block City," or mere suggestions, like the illustration with "Personal" and "A man said" where the poems are printed on a soft, dusky pink background, with a plain white envelope floating in the mist.  The illustration with "Charge of the Light Brigade" covers two whole pages in shades of grey, as if viewing the men on horseback through the fog of smoke from cannon fire.  Muth imagines Abraham Lincoln standing at the edge of the battlefield at Gettysburg, gazing out at the cemetery with a single page of paper (presumably containing the Gettysburg Address) in one hand.  Muth places Lincoln off to the side, the lower-right of the two-page spread, so he's one of the last thing our eyes hit as they travel across the illustration.  The focus of the painting, as is of Lincoln's speech, is of the now-silent battlefield.  The illustrations can be a bit literal, representing exactly what's said in the poem, but from time to time, Muth throws in a touch of whimsy, such as the young man, reclining on his elbows, watching a baseball game on television in the middle of a summer meadow.  Even so, the color, shading, and obvious craftsmanship that went into the paintings is exquisite.  They give the book a slight air of nostalgia for a simpler time, when people did sit on the porch or around the kitchen table, entertaining each other by reciting poetry.  Which, when it comes down it, is the purpose of the book.

The book is a really good anthology of poems that can find an audience no matter the age range.  There are poems for young children, middle grades, high school, and beyond.  It wouldn't be out of place in a school library or classroom library.  It is, though, a very traditional anthology.  Most of the poems veer away from any whiff of controversy, although many can lead to spirited discussions.  I did notice a pattern about halfway through the book.  It seemed as if a majority of the poems were written by men.  I wondered if I was seeing things that weren't there, because at first glance it felt as if there were plenty of poems written by women.  So I decided to count.  Out of eighty-nine poets, sixty-six of them are men.  Out of those sixty-six, a whopping fifty are basically Caucasian men.  I have to say this really disappointed me.  There are many well-regarded female poets and poets of color, especially considering this collection was published in 2013.  It was a somewhat disappointing discovery after I had enjoyed the book to that point.  I was especially disappointed in the choice to include a translation of a Navajo poem -- "In beauty may I walk" -- written by a Caucasian man when the Abenaki writer Joseph Bruchac has one that is, in my opinion, much more moving and beautiful. Still, in the overall summation of the book, these aren't deal breakers , and the overall quality of the book and the poems in it are quite good.

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Spotlight on...

"Tommy" 

I put a seed into the ground
And said,  "I'll watch it grow."
I watered it and cared for it
As well as I could know.
One day I walked in my back yard,
And oh, what did I see!
My seed had popped itself right out,
Without consulting me.
-- Gwendolyn Brooks (2013, 160)

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I think all children should experience growing something from a seed.  "Tommy" is a great way to introduce younger students to growing plants, vegetables, or flowers. After sharing the poem with the students, they can choose whether to grow a flower or herb (parsley, sage, rosemary, or thyme among others), plant the seeds, then observe the seed sprouting.  In the meanwhile, they can keep a record of the experience, and then write a poem about it.  They can write a poem about the seedling or how it felt to grow something.

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Works Cited

Kennedy, Caroline, ed. 2013. Poems to Learn by Heart. Illustrated by Jon J. Muth. New York: Disney Hyperion.

"The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane" by C. M. Millen, Illustrated by Andrea Wisnewski (LS 5663)

Millen, C. M. 2010. The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane. Illustrated by Andrea Wisnewski. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge.

ISBN: 978-1-58089-179-0

Cover image from
www.charlesbridge.com

The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane by C. M. Millen is a gentle romp through a medieval Irish monastery, where the titular Brother Theophane feels constrained by the monotonous routine of copying books, when he longs to find a glimmer of joy in his work, whether it's in the antics of the birds that he feeds on the windowsill of the scriptorium or the beauty of sunlight flickering through the leaves of the trees.  Theophane rather reminded me of Maria frolicking through an Austrian mountainside.  This impression is only reinforced by Andrea Wisnewski's beautifully rendered papercut print and watercolor illustrations that give Theophane an impish twinkle in his eye and an unabashedly joyous smile at even something as simple as burstingly ripe blackberries.  The poetry and illustrations combine to form a cohesive work, and it's no surprise to find that The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane won the 2011 Lee Bennett Hopkins Award.

Theophane is a young monk in the monastery of Mourne.  Unlike the other monks, who march in a stately line, Theophane often skips his way through the day, pilfering bits of his breakfast bread to give to the birds, taking a moment of his day to pause and gaze out the window.  Theophane isn't quite suited to sitting still, copying works of literature, science, and theology, so the senior monk attempts to find a place in the monastery where Theophane's exuberance will be a help and not a hindrance.  Sent to make the ink the brothers will use to make their copies, Theophane experiments with the colors he sees in nature: the juice of ripe berries, roots, flowers, and leaves.  Theophane spends a night carefully crafting works of art around the written words in the brothers' manuscripts, creating an illuminated manuscript.

While this is a technically a poetry picture book, every so often, Millen punctuates the events of the poetry with a few lines of poetry in the voice of Theophane, adapted from the poems found in the margins and scribbled on scraps of parchment written by the Irish monks.  In an author's note Millen (2010) states that those bits and pieces of poetry, written by the monks, were curated and translated by Thomas Kinsella into The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse (30).  One could easily separate the poetry from the drawings, and study it on its own.  The snippets of poetry written by actual monks is a nice touch.  They take the idea of two-dimensional historical figures, and with Millen's (and Theophane's) help, turn them into people with which a reader might identify.  Every schoolchild, from Kindergarten to grade 12 knows how it feels to gaze out of a classroom window at the sunny scene outside.  Older (adult) readers will appreciate Theophane's sentiments upon leaving their labors to to enjoy a spring afternoon: "As he opened the door / a breeze kissed his brow / and removed every trace / of Theophane's frown" (Millen 2010, 15).  Millen easily transitions from the narrative into Theophane's poems by using Theophane's actions and thoughts to "inspire" them.  Despite the subject matter and setting, Millen (2010) keeps the religious aspects to a minimum, with a single poem praising God for the abundance of colors in nature (22).

Millen writes the poem with a rhythm that mimics a young child skipping across a field, swinging their lunchbox.  It's actually a quite good reflection of Theophane's personality.  The rhythm is just on this side of descending into a sing-song rhythm, and is readily apparent from the very first lines:

In the mountains of Mourne,
up twisted old bends,
past blackberry brambles
and ancient wood glens,
there stood a tall tower --
a circle of stone (Millen 2010, 1).

Millen uses a rhyme scheme, but it's quite sporadic in that that second and fourth lines rhyme, but the first and third don't.  It breaks up the rhyming in such a way so that it prevents the rhythm of the poem from going into that sing-songy style.  Millen's word choice is strong enough that she doesn't need to use rhyme to establish the rhythm.

One of Millen's most effective phrases is the repetition of "simple brown _____" when describing the life of the monks.  She first invokes it on the very first page, talking about monks wearing "simple brown robes,  / filling simple brown books, / eating simple brown bread, / and saying their prayers / by their simple brown beds" (Millen 2010, 1).  Just two words inform the reader of the static consistency of the routine of the monastery.  Millen doesn't use a great deal of figurative language, but every so often she uses a bit of personification,  such as when she describes the breeze kissing Theophane's brow.  The strength of Millen's language lies in the adjectives and verbs she chooses to describe Theophane, his actions, and the environment.  She juxtaposes Theophane's outward appearance with his internal burst of emotion when the senior brother sends him out of the scriptorium: "Theophane solemnly / slid from his chair, / laid down his pen, / and skipped down the stairs" (Millen 2010, 11).  Theophane's joy is short-lived, because Millen (2010) instantly sends him down into a room

at the pit of the tower,
down where the ink
was made over a fire, 

.................................... 

Sweating and sleepy,
thirsty and tired,
Theophane toiled
all night at the pyre. (13)

The alliteration in "sweating and sleepy" and "thirsty and tired" make those two lines stand out from the others, illustrating just how different the room where Theophane makes ink is from the scriptorium.  The poetry does an excellent job of depicting Theophane's personality.  Anyone who falls flat on their face when they've tripped, but laughs with pleasure sounds like an optimistic sort of person.

Wisnewski's artwork is reminiscent of woodcuts, with their thick, heavy outlines.  The colors she used are vivid, but slightly muted, keeping in the gentle overall tone of the book.  The drawings are wonderfully detailed, so that the reader can see the striations on the surface of leaves and flower petals.  Wisnewski also illuminates the text of the poem, surround each page of text with Celtic knotwork motifs, flowers, vines, or blackberry brambles.  She nicely contrasts the browns and greys of the monastery with the varied greens, purples, reds, and yellows of the outdoors.  Wisnewski  draws the monks so they do resemble one another.  Theophane, however, is drawn as a much younger man with a playful smile that leaps off the page.

In the Author's Note at the end of the book, Millen briefly recounts the role of Irish monasteries in preserving ancient Greek, Roman, and Arabic scholastic and literary works.  She describes some of the methods the monks used to make colored inks, and also mentions the Book of Kells, one of more famous examples of an illustrated manuscript.  Millen provides a short list of additional books and websites that discuss the history of illustrated manuscripts and how to make your own ink from plants.  The book does lack page numbers, but it's not a major deterrent to a reader at all, considering it's essentially single poem.

This is such a lovely book.  It might not appeal to younger readers, but students studying the Middle Ages might enjoy it as part of an enrichment activity.  Art history and art students might also like it, especially as an introduction to a unit of medieval art and illuminated manuscripts.  The book's theme that everyone has their place in the world shines through without being heavy-handed or ham-fisted.  Theophane is a nonconformist through and through, but he chooses to be proactive about trying to find where he fits into the world of the monastery and still retain his sense of joy in the world, rather than trying to force the monastery to mold itself to him.

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Spotlight on...

He sliced and he slivered,
he grated and chopped,
preparing the plants
to be boiled in pots. 

"Weld blooms bring orange,
cabbage leaves, green.
The more madder I get,
the redder it seems. 

"The buckthorn turns golden,
while woad leaves turn blue,
and bilberries spill
very bright violet hues. 

"And from the wee crocus
such a strong yellow shade."
Theophane smiled
at the rainbow he'd made.  (Millen 2010, 21)

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I would use this book to introduce a unit about illuminated manuscripts in an advanced art class.  Students would either write their own original poems (subjects up to the students) or bring in a favorite poem.  They would then illuminate it, based on what they've learned about illuminated manuscripts.  Students can choose to either type their poem into a Word document and choose a calligraphic font or learn how to write in calligraphy and physically hand-write the poem.  Students can use ready-made inks or paints to illuminate the poems.  If they're so inclined, they can try their hand at making ink using organic substances (flowers, berries, plants), like Theophane.  They can use the resources listed at the end of the book to start their research.

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Works Cited

Millen, C. M. 2010. The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane. Illustrated by Andrea Wisnewski. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge.