"Face Bug" by J. Patrick Lewis, Photographs by Frederic B. Siskind, Illustrations by Kelly Murphy (LS 5663)

Lewis, J. Patrick. 2013. Face Bug. Photographs by Frederic B. Siskind. Illustrated by Kelly Murphy.  Honsdale, PA: WordSong.

ISBN: 978-1-59078-925-4

Photo of cover
by: L. Propes

Face Bug by J. Patrick Lewis, with illustrations by Kelly Murphy and photographs by Frederic B. Siskind imagines the book as a trip through a museum exhibit about bugs.  It's a conceit that works, due in large part to Murphy's whimsical ink and graphite drawings that serve as the binding element to the book.  In a series of fifteen poems, Lewis introduces us to several insects that look far more fearsome than they really are.  Some are annoying or bite, but overall, they're relatively harmless.  But in all honesty, some of these insects are...  Well, let's just say I wouldn't want to hang their framed head shots in my living room.  Siskind provides bright color photographs of each insect.  When I saw the cover of the book with the image of a seemingly happy praying mantis, my first thought was "I'm ready for my close up, Mr. DeVille!"

The book contains a table of contents, which is presented as a list of bugs on exhibit.  Each bug also has a small thumbnail of its portrait next to its name.  The title of each poem is the name of the insect featured in the poem.  There is also a subtitle which is the binomial, or Latin, name.  The subtitles don't appear on the table of contents, but they do appear on the actual poem.  The end of the book has a section that has more information about the bugs.  It's presented in a sort of "getting to know me" format, where the reader learns more about where the insect lives, how they grow, what they eat, and what eats them.  If that seems a little graphic for a poetry book, it maintains the theme Lewis had through the book.  He doesn't sugar-coat the life and habits of the bugs in the book.

Photo of Kelly Murphy
drawing by: L. Propes

The museum exhibit begins on the front flap of the dust jacket, with a banner that welcomes you to the Face Bug Museum and gives you a preview of what you can expect once inside the doors of the museum.  The table of contents page continues the museum theme with a grand opening sign.  Murphy's drawings encapsulate all the trappings of a natural history museum: the atrium with lots of windows, a gift shop, fountain, and café; interactive activities with the exhibits; a hatchery; film; and live show.  Each poem represents a different part of the exhibit and museum, which helps give the book a sense of moving from one exhibit to another.  Murphy gives the insects moving through the museum little speech balloons that have a comment or two about that particular exhibit, which also contributes to the feeling of moving through a museum.  Murphy's drawings are one of the best things about the book.  They surround the poem and the photograph in such a way that it enhances the feel of a segment of the exhibit about that particular bug.  The visit to the museum ends, as it were, with a two page spread that shows the bug families enjoying the museum and its offerings, with a large banner that says "thank you" over the doors.  

The poems are typically Lewis -- bouncy and rhythmic, with lots of rhyme.  "Grand Opening: The Bug Face Museum" is a really good example of this.  It's composed of rhymed couplets, with a little alliteration thrown in.  It also sounds like the ringmaster of a circus, announcing the opening of the Bug Face Museum:

Climb through windows, walls, or basement, Insects, Spiders, guests.  It's free!
Our Smithsonian -- from Dragon-, Horse-, and Butterfly to Bee --
Is a hoppin', bug-eye poppin' photo show.  The place is packed!
We've installed designer lighting for the Moths it will attract. 

............................................................................................................................... 

No antennae on the photos, pests.  Just come and face your fear.
Drop whomever you are eating. Our Grand Opening is here! (Lewis 2013, 4)

At times, Lewis structures the poetry to resemble the activities of the subject of the poem.  In "Easter Carpenter Bee," he indents the lines of each stanza to resemble a bee burrowing into wood:

Who has made a hole in your house,
          A hole in your house?
                     That's me!
It's what I learned to do in school.
             You see, I'm a carpenter bee. (Lewis 2013, 8)

It's a method he also uses in "Pearl Crescent Butterfly" to illustrate the movement of a butterfly flitting from flower to flower to sip their nectar.

Sipping on a black-eyed Susan --
Any
     flower
                   nectars
                               ooze
                                         in
........................................................ 

If it's summer, here they come,
Females
     smaller
                   than
                                 a 

                                       thumb... (Lewis 2013, 12) 

Lewis' rhyme schemes are generally rhyming couplets or he rhymes every other line, which works most of the time, as in "Green Darner Dragonfly:"

Helicopter Dragonflyer
Stopping, starting rapid-fire.
He's the Emperor of the Pond,
Skimming lily pad and frond.
Day is sunny, but he's shady,
Spots a Darner Dragon Lady. (Lewis 2013, 22) 

There are other times when Lewis' rhymes don't quite work as well.  He has to manipulate the structure of the poem in order to make the rhyme fit, but it causes a hiccup between the seeing the words and trying to read them out loud.  In "Hickory Horned Devil," Lewis shifts a word to the next line in order to make his rhyme scheme work:

Look! A mini porcupine,
Country-colored coral reef
On an overhanging leaf,
Mother Nature's Frankenstein 

Nonchalantly eats his fill.
What if you were just a small
Caterpillar, one inch tall,
Who met this Devil dressed to kill? (Lewis 2013, 6)

If read aloud, it's fine, but the structure almost gets in the way of being able to read it the way it should be.  The space between the first and second stanza, quoted above, signals to the reader that they should pause, which is awkward.  Also, placing "caterpillar" on the line after the qualifying adjective of "small" also can signal an awkward line reading.  In "Nursery Web Spider," Lewis switches from rhyming couplets to an ABBA/CDDC structure for two stanzas, then back to the couplets.  It throws off the the rhythm of the rest of the poem, especially when reading aloud.

When the poem calls for it, Lewis is able to perfectly describe the subject.  In "Dogday Harvestfly Cicada," Lewis doesn't shy away from talking about how ugly this particular bug is.  (Yeah, it's that ugly...)  Describing the American Horse Fly as a Clydesdale (think the Budweiser horses) is a perfect way to succinctly describe just how big this insect is in relation to the others.  "Goldenrod Stowaway Moth" talks about how the bug uses its coloring to hide from swallows among goldenrod flowers.  Neat, huh?  And it's pretty golden hue gleams against the greenery.  After Lewis finishes talking about how lovely the bug is, he talks about how prickly it is: "But there are, oh, one hundred twenty / Things I would not dare do, / And one is touch a bristle on / That paintbrush of a hairdo!" (Lewis 2013, 17).  Just calling the bug's hairdo a paintbrush, it brings to mind the soft, yet bristly sensation you feel when you tap the ends of the bristles of a paintbrush.

Lewis uses a lot of personification in his poems, giving the bugs a personality or calling them by a name.  He allows the bugs to narrate their own poems, as in "Bush Katydid," where the Katydid is busily talking about his different names and how he appears to different things until he runs into a windshield with an almighty "splat" (Lewis 2013, 24).

The poems are fun to read, but in all honesty, they didn't really have a lasting impact on me.  Others might feel differently.  The poems are cute, and they're a great way to introduce insects, especially with younger students.  Lewis' poetry is always fun to read and he does a good job of describing the bugs and their habits in the poetry.  Most of the poems are quite fun to read, aside from a few where the rhyme scheme or rhythm gets a little awkward.  The inclusion of the bugs' Latin names is also a really great way to introduce the concept of binomial names to older students, and science teachers can use it as part of a lesson on biological classification.  The structure of the book as a museum exhibit gives it a natural progression from one bug to another, which would appeal to readers of all ages.  The photographs may not appeal to those of us who are on the squeamish side of the spectrum or feel that the only good bugs are the ones who stay on their side of the kitchen window.  Kids (and grownups) who love bugs and insects will adore the close up photographs of the bugs that are so gloriously detailed that you can see the expressions (as it were) on their tiny faces.  This would be a good addition to a school or classroom library or a children's collection of a public library.

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Spotlight on...

"Saddleback Caterpillar"

Sibine stimulea 

Though kids love him in Room 102,
There's a horrible hullabaloo
           When the substitute teacher
           Says, "Children, that creature
Belongs in a non-petting zoo. 

"He's handsome, he's graceful and cute,
But a bug in a mo' hair suit
            Can tenderly stroke you
            Or suddenly poke you --
A saddleback rash is a beaut!" (Lewis 2013, 28).

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After sharing this poem with a science class (reading and displaying the page through a document camera), students will be encouraged to create a museum exhibit using poetry, photographs, drawings, or other means to communicate the information they find about a particular animal or insect of their choice.  Students will need to include the Latin name as part of the exhibit, just like Lewis' poetry.  After the exhibit is complete, other classes will be encouraged to visit and perform a gallery walk, leaving comments on sticky notes provided for the purpose.

The class will work together to create the exhibit as a whole, but the students will work on their own or in small groups to create their portion of the exhibit.

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Works Cited

Lewis, J. Patrick. 2013. Face Bug. Photographs by Frederic B. Siskind. Illustrations by Kelly Murphy.  Honsdale, PA: WordSong.

'Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers: The Life of Marc Chagall in Verse" by J. Patrick Lewis & Jane Yolen (LS 5663)

Lewis, J. Patrick and Jane Yolen. 2011. Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers: The Life of Marc Chagall in Verse. Mankato, MN: Creative Editions.

ISBN: 987-1-56846-211-0

Cover image from:
www.janeyolen.com

Marc Chagall was born in Vitebsk in Russia in 1887.  His parents were solidly working-class, but young Marc wanted to become an artist. He studied painting in St. Petersburg, and then apprenticed to another painter and scene designer when he met Bella, who would become his wife.  He moved to Paris to study painting.  He was living in Moscow during the Russian Revolution, but eventually managed to obtain visas for his young family to leave Russia; and they moved to Paris, where they lived until the Nazi regime invaded France.  Chagall, who was Jewish, fled France, and settled in New York City for several years, returning to France after World War II ended.  Sadly, his beloved wife, Bella, had died in New York in 1944.  Chagall continued to paint, draw, and in the latter part of his career, design stained glass.  He died in Paris in 1985, at the age of 97.

It's not hard to recognize Chagall's distinctive style of painting.  It's an entrancing combination of hard and soft edges, blended colors, rich hues, and whimsical, musically talented animals, generally goats.  In fact, one of my favorite paintings is his La Mariée, known to most people as the print in Hugh Grant's kitchen in the film Notting Hill.  La Mariée doesn't make an appearance in J. Patrick Lewis and Jane Yolen's Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers: The Life of Marc Chagall in Verse, but many of his other paintings appear to create illustrations with the poems that briefly, but richly describe Chagall's eventful life or narrate his paintings.  His paintings are poetry, but a poetry that utilizes images instead of words, so it makes sense to pair his paintings with poetry.  J. Patrick Lewis and Jane Yolen partner together to create a lyrical biography of Marc Chagall and his artwork.

Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers contains fourteen poems that share a title with the accompanying painting.  Yolen and Lewis each wrote seven of the poems, beginning with Chagall's birth ("Maternity") and ending with the elegiac "The Fall of Icarus."  Each poem/painting combination also has a brief bit of biographical information that corresponds to the time period in the poem.  The name of the poet who wrote the particular poem appears in rather small font, perpendicular and to the left of the actual poem, which also helps to steer the focus of the reader to the poem itself and not the particular author.  Each painting has a caption with the title of the painting; the year Chagall painted it; its size; and the name of the museum or person who owns it.  There are also a few photographs of Chagall, usually with his wife in the book.  It also contains footnotes to explain some of the Hebrew or Yiddish words that appear in the poems or a particular Jewish tradition.  Their location at the end of each page is ideal, so a reader's eyes flick quickly down to the bottom to find the information, then they can go right back into the poem without missing a beat.  The book's layout follow s a regular pattern: the poem on the left side of a two-page spread, with the reproduction of the painting on the right.  The pages themselves are lovely -- the heavy, glossy paper one usually sees in heavy books that contain reproductions of famous works of art.  Yolen and Lewis also include a list of sources at the end of the book.  Two of them are memoirs written by both Bella and Marc.  Yolen and Lewis both weave Bella and Marc's own words into their poems, giving them a level of immediacy and intimacy that draws you into their world.

Why name the book after the painting Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers?  In Yiddish, (as Lewis and Yolen note) to do something well, with a level of finesse and expertise,  is to do it with seven fingers. Did Chagall paint with seven fingers?  I would definitely say so.

Lewis and Yolen have much different styles of poetry.  Yolen tends to write in a more flexible, free-verse style, while Lewis' poems generally have a distinct rhythm and rhyme scheme.  Lewis uses rhyme to help create a mannered rhythm in his poems, especially in "I and the Village" and "Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers."  "I and the Village" uses a series of rhymed couplets, while "Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers" contains four stanzas, each with four lines.  The outer lines of each stanza rhyme, and the inner lines rhyme like this: "Today I make a work of art, / A red-and-orange wonderland, / By seven-fingered sleight of hand -- / Let ambiguity play a part" (Lewis 2011, 24).  The combination of the symmetry of the poem (four lines, four stanzas) is juxtaposed next to the Cubist, but still fluid painting, "Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers."  Lewis also wrote the bouncy "Over Vitebsk," which reflects Chagall's nine or ten year old self, looking back at his first forays into art.  One of Lewis' (2011) poems, "The Promenade," employs personification, describing Paris as the "patron saint of color" (26).  Perhaps the best use of personification in this poem is how Lewis (2011) describes New York as a woman with secrets and a history, hidden underneath the glitzy costumes and makeup: "New York, kaleidoscope of the world, red and / amber carnival of the senses, dares anyone to find / the gritty soul beneath her glitter petticoats" (26).

Yolen's verse veers more toward the poignant, emotional soul of Chagall and his paintings.  She incorporates a quote from Bella that describes her first meeting with Chagall in "My Fiancée in Black Gloves:" "his eyes, /... so blue as the sky, / and oblong, like almonds" (Yolen 2011, 15).  Yolen writes her poem to compliment Bella's words and capture the feeling of exuberant joy.  In it, she alludes to Chagall's future eclipse over his master by calling him "a sun over Bakst's pale moon" (Yolen 2011, 15).  Yolen (2011) uses Chagall's painting "Double Portrait with a Glass of Wine" to imagine how Bella was able to keep the family's life running smoothly, allowing Marc to create his "scribbles full of color and love" (20).  Yolen (2011) imagines Marc saying of Bella, "she could tote us like an old rag peddler / bent double with his heavy sacks... / never feeling the weight" (20).  In those few phrases, Yolen is able to convey how Chagall must have felt about his wife and the way she supported and inspired his need to paint and draw.  It's a sentiment paralleled in "Autoportrait" that details Chagall's life with his second wife, Vava, who (according to the biographical information that accompanies the poem) helped Chagall find a renewed zest for painting that seemed to have been lost when Bella died.  Yolen (2011) writes, "I take off my hat to you, Vava, / and my heart, / that stopped beating after Bella's death. / Only promise not to straighten my studio / where clutter feeds the artist's life" (34).

Perhaps the most poignant of the Yolen poems is "The Flying Horse," which describes how Chagall and his family fled Paris after the Nazi invasion, carrying the memory of the men, women, and children left behind in the camps; the artwork they had to leave behind; and the city of Paris itself.  Yolen (2011) gently alludes to Bella's imminent death, by saying, "But Death, that old leveller, / can find you wherever you go" (31).  Even though the family escaped the horrors of the Holocaust, Death could still find them, even an ocean away in New York.  In the poems where they refer to God, the authors even follow the traditional Jewish convention of writing it as "G-d."  (In more traditional Jewish communities, it is seen as disrespectful to write out the name of God.)

The book is neatly bookended by Chagall's birth and his forays into designing and making stained glass windows, an art form he didn't begin to pursue until he was over seventy years old.  The final poem, however, is an interpretation of Chagall's painting, "The Fall of Icarus," completed when he was nearly ninety.  Rather than paint Icarus falling into the sea, as is commonly told through legend, Chagall depicted Icarus falling to the middle of a field, surrounded on one side by people genuinely distressed at his passing, and on the other by people reveling in their schadenfreude.  While Lewis doesn't come out and say so, one can surmise that he views the painting as a commentary of all that Chagall had viewed and experienced during his long life.  It serves to summarize the whole of Chagall's rather eventful life.  Through his art, Chagall experienced the greatest heights of what humanity can offer the world, but he also experienced worst.

This book should appeal to secondary grade students and some middle grade students.  While the format might make people think of it as a picture book, and mistakenly label it as a piece of juvenilia, the combination of poetry and art analysis might be a bit advanced for younger students.  It isn't that I feel that younger students can't understand it.  I think they might enjoy some of the poetry, or have insights to the artwork that aren't apparent to adults.  It might be a work they won't fully appreciate until they are older, with a little more life experience under their belt.  It would make a great addition to an art or art history class library or a Judaica class that studies significant Jewish figures.

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Spotlight on...

"The Violinist"

Oh, Uncle, play me a communion,
on your kishefdik violin
as you dance in the big boots on the rooftop.
Let me sway with you in shoes of fire
on the streets of Lyozno, Ekaterinoslav, Vitebsk,
and in all the little shtetls where men dance together
and women envy our excesses.
There is something heroic about that dance,
every one of us making our way in song
up the long road to the throne of G-d.

kishefdik: Yiddish for "magical" or "charmed by a magic spell"
shtetls: Jewish villages, often those just outside of big towns
G-d: the way some observant Jews spell the Lord's name (Yolen 2011, 12).

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I was intrigued by the concept of using poetry to create a biography of an artist by interpreting their paintings.  After sharing the poem and the painting with an art class, the students would work individually or in small groups to choose an artist, select a painting or two, then write a poem that either interprets the painting, tells a story about what's going on in the painting, or reflects a moment in the artist's life.  They can incorporate the poem into the painting by deconstructing the pairing and making a collage with the painting and the poem.

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Works Cited

Lewis, J. Patrick and Jane Yolen. 2011. Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers: The Life of Marc Chagall in Verse. Mankato, MN: Creative Editions.

'Doodle Dandies: Poems That Take Shape" by J. Patrick Lewis, images by Lisa Desimini

Lewis, J. Patrick. (1998). Doodle Dandies: Poems That Take Shape.  Ill. by Lisa Desimini. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks.  ISBN: 9780689848896

Photo by: L. Propes

Don't let the cartoonish-collage cover of Doodle Dandies fool you.  True, it is a book of poetry for younger children, but children of all ages can find something to appreciate between its covers.  There are nineteen poems in Doodle Dandies.  Most of them are short, perhaps a line or two at the most, and they cover a wide range of topics from a lady walking her dachshund in a poem titled appropriately enough, "Dachshund" to a widow mourning under the branches of a willow tree in "Weeping Willow".  What really sets Doodle Dandies apart from other works of poetry is the shape of the poems.  Each poem is arranged in such a way that it becomes an illustration in its own right, apart from the collage-style illustrations provided by Desimini.

Photo by: L. Propes

Most of the poems in Doodle Dandies rhyme, but without a consistent rhyme scheme.  In some poems the combination of rhyme and rhythm could easily become a playground or classroom chant.  This is especially true of "Dachshund" and "First Bud of Spring".  Lewis sprinkles alliteration to great effect throughout the poems, most notably in "Weeping Willow".  The alliteration adds to the rhythm of the poem with shorter words paired with a longer one.  As a quilter, I appreciated the imagery in "Synchonized Swim Team".  Lewis' describes a pool as "wrinkled waves... like a quilt of blue" with the swimmers' legs compared to a set of needles, "poking through".  In "Oyster Family", Lewis uses a sly play on words as he works his way through an oyster father, son, and daughter before arriving at "mother-of-pearl".  (As far as I know, any pearl oyster can produce a pearl.)  In other poems, the title becomes a seamless part of the poem (see "The Butterfly Is...").  For the most part, Lewis succeeds in making poetry accessible to children and adults.  Most of the subjects are related to animals and nature, which makes this book a perfect addition to any elementary school classroom, and even middle and high school classrooms.

There are times where the poems don't work, for one reason or another.  In "Winter", a lovely poem to look at, is nonetheless a bit difficult to actually read.   It seems as if the effort to make each word look like falling snow took precedence over making it where a reader could focus on the actual word. It might be discouraging for some readers.  "Halley's Comet" is the one poem where the rhythm feels rocky and awkward.  It doesn't flow out of a reader's mouth like the others, nor does it have the same funky sense of pace.  "Lashondra Scores" is another poem that has a fantastic message for the girl athletes in a class (Lashondra wins the game), the illustration might make some teachers and parents hesitate, especially if they recall the furor that arose when a teacher in New York introduced Carolivia Herron's Nappy Hair to her class.  It's a small thing, I know, but social media has a way of turning small, innocent illustrations into a larger tempest.

Photo by: L. Propes

The illustrations are presented in collage form, with some of the images enlarged to show the texture.  The letters that make up the book's title on the cover are taken from the illustrations in the book, with one of the poems' character making a cameo appearance.  The combination of illustrations with the poems works very well, providing a background for the language.

Desimini's illustrations complement the images Lewis creates with his poetry, rarely overshadowing the poems, often adding a layer of additional information for the reader. Again, returning to "Weeping Willow"...  The poem is such a perfect mixture of illustration, poetry, and emotional impact.  It makes a reader ask questions.  Why is the widow hiding under the tree?  Is she the only mourner at her spouse's funeral?  Has she stopped under the tree to collect herself, perhaps because there might be small children with her?  Like I said, there is something in this book to appeal to all ages.

Photo by: L. Propes

Considering most of the poems have a nature theme, it isn't too far of a stretch to imagine a science teacher using the poems to introduce a lesson.  The poems aren't limited to biology.  "Skyscraper" would make an excellent physics warm-up.  "Halley's Comet" would also make a good introduction to astronomy or a transition from one part of the solar system to comets in general.  Some poems could be used in parallel with others, like "Casey At the Bat" or "The Tyger". In the current educational climate, differentiated education is the rage.  Image poems, like Lewis', could be a way to encourage a child of a more artistic bent to think about language.  Asking them to create an image poem would turn words into art, but at the same time, make them think about the specific word choice so that it not only paints a picture with images, but with sound.

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"The history of poems shaped on the page goes back at least to the seventeenth-century poet George Herbert, and certainly Lewis Carroll used it well in Alice.  Desimini and Lewis take that tradition to rowdy new heights... The very mixed-media art is full of textures and dark, rich colours that repay close examination.  A dandy way indeed to begin a journey to poetry." -- Booklist, July 1998

Photo by: L. Propes

"Lewis... has created an inventive collection of concrete poems.  In each selection, the essence of the subject is captured in the typeface used for the words, the shape in which the lines are arranged, and through Desimini's brilliant mixed-media collages...  Doodle Dandies captures the joy that wordplay can bring." -- School Library Journal, August 1998 

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Works Cited:

DeCandido, GraceAnne A. 1998. Books for youth: Books for middle readers. Booklist 94 (21/22) (July): 1876.

Whalin, Kathleen. 1998. Preschool to grade 4: Nonfiction. School Library Journal 44 (8) (August): 153.