'What My Mother Doesn't Know' by Sonya Sones (LS 5663)

Sones, Sonya. 2001. What My Mother Doesn't Know. NewYork: Simon & Schuster.

ISBN: 978-0-689-84114-9

Cover image from
www.simonandschuster.ca

The back cover of Sonya Sones' What My Mother Doesn't Know practically blares, "One of the top 100 most banned books of the decade!"  So, needless to say, I was expecting something much more scandalous, or at the very least on the same level of unflinching detail as many of Judy Blume's novels.  What lies between the covers is the diary of an average fifteen-year-old girl that is far tamer than say, Blume's Forever or Deanie.  However, Sophie Stein, the protagonist, isn't vastly different from any other teenage girl.  She dates the seemingly perfect guy, finds out the inside of the package isn't nearly as attractive as the outside, breaks up, and then briefly considers dating someone she talks to online, but thankfully quickly discovers his true colors.  Sophie also has to deal with her parents' crumbling marriage, her rapidly changing body (thanks, puberty!), and her inexplicable feelings for Murphy, the geeky, awkward kid in class who's the butt of everyone's jokes. Mostly the novel traces the Sophie's growing maturity, as she learns to value people for who they are, rather than how they appear.

Sophie often feels alienated from her parents, something she relates in several separate poems.  Two entire poems deal with Sophie's feelings about her mother.  "Everyday When I Get Home From School" and "Her Soaps" discuss how Sophie's mother invests more emotional energy in the characters in a soap opera as opposed to her own family.  Sophie relates how when she got her first period, her mother just handed her the necessary supplies and left the room, "leaving [Sophie] with a box full of questions" (Sones 2001, 48).  Sophie and her mother don't see eye-to-eye in regards to many things: dresses for school dances and how to deal with boys among others.  It culminates in a nasty disagreement between the two of them, which concludes with the beginnings of a rapprochement.  "Maybe Dad Loves Me" delves into Sophie's emotionally distant and disengaged father, who rarely demonstrates physical affection with either his wife or daughter.  Sophie mentions that her father does seem to be aware of how much their disengagement affects her, even if he's unsure of how to change things.  Her main sources of emotional support are best friends Grace and Rachel.

The novel consists of a series of free-verse poems that are written in a confessional sort of style.  Sophie gushes over Dylan, her first boyfriend, and his "surfer boy smile on his lips, / the wind tossing his blond curls" (Sones 2001, 39).  The poems show a reflective young lady, who's not unwilling to examine her relationships and come to a sometimes-painful conclusion.  One of the poems that best exemplifies this is "At the County Fair" where Sophie describes what she and Dylan like to do at the county fair in a series of there-line stanzas.  Sophie's wistful musings alternate so that their mutual likes are juxtaposed against one another.  She says,

If only

Dylan liked

Ferris wheels.

If only

I liked

roller coasters.

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

If only

Dylan liked

horse shows.

If only 

I liked

video arcades.

If only

I had come with Rachel and Grace

instead. (Sones 2001, 81)

The repetition of "if only" presents a tone of deliberation as Sophie realizes their differences aren't necessarily "cute" and this might signal the end of her relationship.  There's a sense of sadness and finality, especially in the last line, because it consists of a single word that neatly encapsulates the inevitability that the relationship will not last much longer.

Sones makes good use of spacing to signal a transition to the next thought in the poem or a pause in Sophie's thoughts.  Sometimes, Sones also changes the size of the font, generally to indicate a train of thought that Sophie doesn't want to admit to feeling.  Sones also uses, from time to time, the physical appearance of the poem to illustrate Sophie's state of mind.  In "I Wish" the poem is shaped in an inverted triangle, growing smaller and smaller until the poem reaches its conclusion.  It's a reflection of Sophie’s current frame of mind and desire to be a tiny, petite thing, which is at complete odds with her actual physical stature.  She also employs different types of font to depict other people's written communications with Sophie.  Emails or instant messages from Grace and Rachel are written in neat and tidy fonts, while the messages from Chaz, the boy Sophie chats with online, are an untidy scrawl.  A unique aspect of the poems is how Sones uses the titles.  For the most part, they serve a double purpose, not only as the title, but also often as the first line of the poem.  They blend seamlessly into the rest of the poem, so you don't notice that when you've read the title, you've also read the first line of the poem.

One of the most charming, but ultimately not verbally poetic, elements of the novel are the series of drawings that evoke Renoir's La Bal à Bougival in the lower right corner of the book that create a flip book that shows the couple in the painting dancing and kissing one another.  La Bal à Bougival is Sophie's favorite painting, and she often imagines herself in the role of the young woman in the painting.  

Sones' poems in What My Mother Doesn't Know don't necessarily share the same delicate artistry as say, Jacqueline Woodson's in Brown Girl Dreaming or Nikki Grimes' in Words with Wings, but the thoughts easily flow, and present a reluctant reader an opportunity to read a novel with a great deal of character development.  Sophie is a relatable figure to almost any teenage girl (or grown woman) who engages in a seemingly never-ending struggle to beat their hair into submission for special occasions or makes the mistake of assuming that one's outside appeal is directly proportional to their internal appeal.  As someone with more than a few years on Sophie, I can say we've all been there.  We've all gotten into silly fights with our mothers.  We've all engaged in teasing the class outcast, even when we knew it was wrong, because we didn't want to become the outcast ourselves.  We've been the victims of casual discrimination based on our ethnicity, religion, gender or sexuality.  Sophie's experiences as related in this book are all the more poignant, because they are so familiar.  So while the language doesn't leap off the page in figurative linguistic flights of fancy, it doesn't lessen the impact of the poems.

The book has no table of contents, not even a rudimentary one, and no index to the poems in the novel.  It can make it quite difficult to locate a particular poem, especially in 259 pages of poetry.  

If you have reluctant or struggling female readers, this might be a good book for them to read if you're asking them to do a book talk or book trailer.  It's a nice, breezy read that has a nice plot and loads of character development, especially with Sophie as she gradually matures over the course of the book

Sones published a follow up to What My Mother Doesn't Know titled What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know.

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Spotlight on...

"I Dreamt About That White Dove Last Night"

We were flying together

over the streets of Boston.

I had these strong white wings

that knew just what to do.  

And when I woke up just now.

I started thinking about how

lots of people come to Boston

on vacation all the time.  

So I decided to pretend

I'm one of them today,

and take myself on a vacation.

Only I won't have to leave town to do it.  (Sones 2001, 173)

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There are a lot of things we can take away from this poem, but I'm more interested in vacationing in your hometown aspect of it.  We never really think about what there is to do in our hometowns, do we?  I did my undergrad program with a young man from a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. who rarely went into the city to see the sights, as it were.  They were just there, part of the landscape.

Sophie's poem made me think about how hard it is for even me, a non-native, but resident of Vancouver, to think about all the city has to offer.  So this poem made me really think about touring your hometown.  For this assignment, after the poem as been read to the class, the students will create a travel brochure for a vacation in their hometown.  Things they have to consider are: location, transportation availability, and cost.  Will they have a car or use public transit?  How much will it cost to park the car?  Use transit?  Does transit even go there?  How long are travel times?  Where would you want to eat meals?  How much will those meals cost?  Can you eat on a budget?  How much does it cost to go to the local attractions?  Students need to include contact information and/or websites for restaurants and attractions.

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Works Cited

Sones, Sonya. 2001. What My Mother Doesn't Know. New York: Simon & Schuster.

"Words with Wings" by Nikki Grimes (LS 5663)

Grimes, Nikki. 2013. Words with Wings. Honsdale, PA: WordSong.

ISBN: 978-1-59078-985-8

Cover image
www.nikkigrimes.com

Nikki Grimes' verse novel Words with Wings follows Gabby over the course of several months in the wake of her parents' divorce.  The focus of the novel, however, does not lie in the immediate effects of the divorce, but in Gabby's rich imagination, and how she renders her mental imagery into words.  For Gabby, words aren't mere vehicles for basic communication, they give shape to her daydreams, which also often get her into trouble with her teacher and mother, who view Gabby as inattentive.  Words also serve as a refuge for Gabby, who uses them to shield herself from her parents' arguments and the inevitable teasing she receives at school.

There are two types of poems in this novel: the ones that create the narrative structure of the plot and the ones that demonstrate how Gabby's imagination takes flight when she hears certain words.  Grimes depicts the difference between theses two types of poems by a change in font.  Grimes also signals a switch in the type of poem by having Gabby engage the reader in a conversation.  Gabby says, "Say 'dragon' / and I raise my shield" or "Say 'roller coaster', / and I squeeze my eyes tight" at the beginning of each poem where she speaks about how the words inspire her (Grimes 2013, 60, 51).    It's a convention that Grimes employs for each and every inspirational poem, so even if the font were the same, it would be a clear signal to the reader that these poems have a different purpose than the narrative ones.  The publisher even used the different fonts in the table of contents, as well as offsetting one type from the other, so while it might not be immediately apparent why theses poems have been labelled differently,  it signals to the reader that there is something different about them.

Grimes utilizes several figurative language strategies in Words with Wings like personification, simile, and even something as simple as choosing specific adjectives to create the best picture possible.  Metaphor occurs with much less frequency, but Grimes (2013) uses it effectively in “Waterfall” in order to recreate the sound a waterfall makes as is cascades over the edge of a cliff, calling it “liquid thunder” (30).  Grimes also uses personification occasionally in the poems.  She uses it with good effect in “Camp Dreams” to illustrate how much Gabby’s mother’s refusal to consider sending her to summer camp stings.  Grimes (2013) writes that the word, “’No’ smacks me / in the ear”, which makes me wince just reading it (61).  Any kind of blow to the ear hurts.  A lot.  So for Grimes to choose that particular figurative language conveys to the reader how much it hurts Gabby.  Grimes is also adept at choosing exactly the right adjective.  While using the phrase “winter white” seems to be a no-brainer in a poem titled “Snowflake”, it helps establish an image of sparkling, crystalline snow that couldn’t be possible with any other qualifier (Grimes 2013, 29).   Simile is the most prominent figurative language strategy used by Grimes in Words with Wings.  She uses phrases like, “silent as a sunrise”, “blue as the ribbon of sky”, “jumpy as a cat”, and “the dark wraps around us / like Saturn’s rings” (Grimes 2013, 11, 18, 26, 63).  One could make the argument that Grimes uses simile so much in the poems because it’s much easier to grasp the concept, as opposed to other more abstract forms of figurative language.  Grimes allows the reader to directly compare two concrete objects.  This could help a younger or less sophisticated reader access the figurative language in the poetry. 

Grimes’ use of figurative language not only helps paint the pictures in Gabby’s mind, but the give the reader a glimpse of the emotional life of a sensitive, observant, and highly imaginative young lady.  When Gabby first uses the words that crowd her mind to block the noise of her parents’ arguments, Grimes deftly gives the reader a glimpse into how Gabby manages to learn to cope with her parents’ crumbling marriage.  She also uses the language to demonstrate how her classmates’ diffidence to the “Shy Girl / Who Lives /Inside Her Head” affect Gabby and how liberating it feels someone finally ‘gets’ her.  Students can also get inside the head of a quieter student, one they might overlook in a classroom situation.  If there’s a moral to the story, it’s that everybody has a different way of viewing the world.  Gabby divides the world into two different camps: “Dad is a dreamer / and Mom is a maker. / I’ve been thinking, / maybe / I can be / both” (Grimes 2013, 27).  The structure of the poem, by placing the word ‘maybe’ on its own line gives it an air of cautious hope that one doesn’t have to be a maker or a dreamer. 

The poems are appealing to a wide variety of readers.  Younger and older readers alike can appreciate the development of Gabby as she learns to harness her imagination and use it less as a refuge and more as a creative method of expression.  The poems are able to relate how Gabby savors words and how she views the world.  Mundane objects become something otherworldly in Gabby’s eyes and imaginative hands.  Grimes’ poetry is universally consistent from poem to poem.  Some poems stand out as having more emotional impact, but none stand out for having a lesser quality than others.  While the poems run the gamut from wistful and somber to content and hopeful and none descend into blatant over-sentimentality.  Grimes gives the reader an intimate view into Gabby’s life, and I found myself thinking of other verse novels, and wishing they had taken Grimes’ approach and focused on small group of characters, rather than a 1950s Hollywood cast of thousands.  I would highly recommend that any school or public library add this book to their collection.

Grimes received the 2006 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children.  Words with Wings received a Coretta Scott King honor award in 2014 and was named one of 2014's Notable Children's Books, Middle Readers by the ALSC.  

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Spotlight on...

"Setting the Table"

I grab place mats
blue as the ribbon of sky
beyond my window
where pigeons invite me
outside to play.
But I've got a job to do,
so I shake my head no
and lay down
two knives and two forks.
When I fling a pair of napkins
toward the table,
one sails on the air
like a kite,
and I take off running
across the park,
chasing my crimson high flier
as it cuts across the blue
and -- Mom asks me why
it's taking so long
to set the table.
"Gabby! Snap out of it!" she says.
"I see you forgot the glasses.
Again." (Grimes 2013, 18)

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Grimes' poetry is rich with figurative language, so it makes a perfect vehicle to teach students about using figurative language.  After reading the poem a few times and displaying the text to the class, I would then ask them to pick out phrases that create pictures in their minds or describe everyday objects in a way that makes them more vivid that usual.  The class could then either draw the simile, metaphor, or other figurative language.  The artwork itself is not important, so students could choose to draw or use use old magazines or catalogs to cut out pictures and create a collage that illustrates the figurative language.

In the case of a simile, students would draw both parts of the simile on either side of an equal sign.  One one side of an equal sign, they could draw the blue place mats on the kitchen table, and on the other side, they would draw a close up of the window with its ribbon of blue sky.  Only after they learned to equate both objects in the simile, would the students learn to apply the term and the relevant structure.  They could then create their own similes and add them to a class bulletin board or blog/wikispace.

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Works Cited:

Grimes, Nikki. 2013. Words with Wings. Honsdale, PA: WordSong.

"The Earth Under Sky Bear's Feet" by Joseph Bruchac, Illustrated by Thomas Locker (LS 5663)

Bruchac, Joseph. 1995. The Earth Under Sky Bear's Feet: Native American Poems of the Land. Illustrated by Thomas Locker. New York: Paper Star.

ISBN: 978-0-698-11647-4

Photo of cover
by L. Propes

Joseph Bruchac is a prolific Abenaki writer and performer of Native American folklore and songs.  For this collection of poems, he explores how different Native American cultures of North American view and embrace the night.  The Earth Under Sky Bear's Feet is a companion volume to Bruchac's earlier book Thirteen Moons on Turtle's Back.  The twelve poems, introduced by a short prose piece, explore  what Sky Bear (also known as the Big Dipper) sees as she travels across the night sky.

Bruchac's poems were inspired by Mohawk and Abenaki tales and songs from his own childhood, as well as tales and songs from a range of indigenous cultures.  Some of the cultures reflected in this collection of poems range from the Inuit to the Pawnee and Lakota of the Great Planes to the Cochiti Pueblo, Pima, and Navajo of the Southwestern United States.  Some, like the poem "The Seven Mateinnu" are origin stories (European-based cultures might recognize the Seven Mateinnu as the Pleiades), while others like "A Summer Song" reflect the feelings of the Inuit as they celebrate the return of summer and the caribou, a staple of their survival.  Some poems are whimsical, some are romantic, and some pass down information about using the stars for navigation.  At first glance, it might seem as if Bruchac might have spread it a bit thin, by using so many Aboriginal cultures as source material.  On deeper reflection, each poem is a small gem about a particular facet of the night, and Bruchac manages to make arrange them into a cohesive timeline, beginning at twilight and ending at dawn.  Tying the poems together in a neat bow are Thomas Locker's vibrantly rich and layered oil paintings.  Each poem is illustrated with a painting that depicts part of the actions in the poem.  "Song to the Firefly" features young children chasing and catching the bright pinpoints of light of the fireflies against the velvety purple of the sky just after sunset.  In the poem "Wababanal: The Northern Lights", Locker chooses to highlight the shimmering greens and yellows of the aurora borealis, capturing their undulation across the winter night.  The paintings are far from simple, but by choosing to depict a single moment from the poem in the paintings, Locker is able to create a stunning image of a pivotal point in the poem itself.  One of the best examples of this is in "The Old Wolf's Song", where Locker has painted a manifestation of the lines: "At the break of day / I roam/ watching / I roam" where a wolf sings the secrets of his survival to the rising sun on the horizon (Bruchac 1995, 21).

The last four stanzas of
"The Old Wolf's Song"
Photo by: L. Propes

Bruchac employs figurative language to create images of things we might see once the sun sets.  In "Song to the Firefly", he calls them "small white-fire being" (Bruchac 1995, 5).  He repeats the phrase multiple times in the poem, and it mimics the twinkling of fireflies.  In "Wababanal: The Northern Lights" Bruchac (1995) personifies the aurora borealis by turning the lights into "people [wearing] rainbows as belts. / They had lights on their heads and played with a ball made of light" (11).  Another instance of personification Bruchac uses appears in "Mouse's Bragging Song" as a means to explore the amusing bravado in a mouse family who emerges once the sun sets to a world where they believe they are the only ones on earth.  Figurative language in the poems is not always straightforward, but it tends to occur organically, especially in the origin poems.  In "The Trail of the Piñon Gatherers" Bruchac (1995)  calls the stars the Chumash people use to navigate "a cord made of goose down" to evoke the image of something light and fluffy that scatters easily.  There are times when Bruchac uses repetition to create moods in the poems.  "The Old Wolf's Song" repeats the phrase "I roam" to close each stanza (Bruchac 1995, 21).  This can represent the constant movement of the wolf.  Bruchac also structures the poem to represent the wolf's movement.  Bruchac indents the last three lines of each stanza to elicit the wolf's movement across the prairie.  Each of the three lines is indented just a bit more than the one above so the lines literally run across the page.  When Bruchac begins a new stanza, he starts at the beginning so to speak, and the structure literally reflects the means the wolf uses to endure another day.  Repetition also gives the poem "Dawn House Song" a prayerful quality.  The last stanza reminds me of the Birkot Ha'Shahar, one of the morning prayers in Judaism, which also repeats a single phrase over and over, just as "Dawn House Song" does.

Before me, may it be beautiful.
Behind me, may it be beautiful.
Around me, may it be beautiful.
Below me, may it be beautiful.
Above me, may it be beautiful.
All around me, may it be beautiful.
Within me may it be beautiful. (Bruchac 1995, 23)

With the repetition, Bruchac is able to gradually bring the beauty of the dawn from the environment around the narrator of the poem to a place inside where they can carry it with them.

From the poem
"The Scattered Stars"
Photo by: L. Propes

The poems might not appeal to young children, although the ones that delve into the origins of constellations would pair nicely with other poems about space and the way other cultures depict the origins of the stars.  The K-12 school curriculum in British Columbia is currently undergoing a revision where Aboriginal content is integrated into the regular curriculum, and this book of poems, along with Thirteen Moons on Turtle's Back, could find a place in science classes studying astronomy or English classes studying poetry or folklore.  The poems should appeal to older students.  They expose students to cultures and their literature that are not routinely taught in schools.  Even with younger students, the language and ideas Bruchac uses in his poems is not so advanced that they won't be able to grasp the meaning.  This isn't to say that the language is simplistic.  The descriptive language helps bring the poems alive, and younger children can learn how to choose just the right words to create an image.  The poems are of good quality, and the images they create, more than the words themselves are what sticks with you.

Unfortunately, there are no access features in the book.  There aren't even page numbers.  Both of these things combine to create difficulty in locating a particular poem, forcing the reader to leaf through the book until you find the right one.  The layout does aid the reader in locating the poems.  Each poem is featured on a two-page spread, with the poem printed on half of the left page and the remaining pages covered with Locket's gorgeous artwork.  Bruchac does provide a bibliography of the songs and tales he used to create the poems, so readers can go to the source material and compare it to Bruchac's poems.

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Spotlight on...

"Sky Bear"

Long ago,
three hunters and their little dog
found the tracks of a giant bear.
They followed those tracks all through the day
...........................................................................
That bear was Sky Bear,
running on through the stars.
Look up now
and you will see her,
circling the sky. (Bruchac 1995, 3)

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A section of the painting from
the poem "Song to the Firefly"
Photo by: L. Propes

I would use this poem in one of two ways.  The first lesson would be in a science class to introduce astronomy and how different cultures viewed the stars.  I would ask the students to consider the characteristics of the constellation we know as the Big Dipper and why Aboriginal cultures would choose to describe it as a constellation that continuously watches over the events on Earth.  The next way I could use this particular poem is in an English class.  After reading the poem, students will compare and contrast Aboriginal folk tales and legends with another culture's, much in the way students compare Greek and Roman legends and myths to Egyptian or Norse myths.

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Works Cited

Bruchac, Joseph. 1995. The Earth Under Sky Bear's Feet: Native American Poems of the Land.
     Illustrated by Thomas Locker. New York: Paper Star.

"Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars" -- Space Poems and Paintings by Douglas Florian (LS 5663)

Florian, Douglas. 2007. Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars.  New York: Harcourt.

ISBN: 978-0-15-205372-7

Photo of Cover by: L. Propes

Douglas Florian's collection of short poems about space, Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars, is just so much fun to read.  The illustrations of gouache and collage add a deliciously funky vibe to the reading of these poems.  The illustration that accompanies the poem "Neptune" contains collage bits of a mosaic of the planet's namesake and a trident, while a few of the moons have their names orbiting around them.  One moon even has a picture of a boat sailing on the sea.  It's a clever and witty means to help readers make the connection between the planet's name and the god for whom it's named.  Florian employs similar little touches throughout the rest of the book, while using die cuts in the pages to turn a small portion of the drawing of the moon on the following page to become the moon on the pages of the poem about the Earth.  This is definitely a book where the drawings are just as much a part of the poetry as the words themselves.  One poem in particular, "A Galaxy", completely embodies the idea of the book as a combination of words and pictures.  "A Galaxy" is a concrete poem, written/drawn in the shape of a spiral galaxy.  Florian surrounded the poem by renderings of the shapes of different galaxies.

Florian's concrete poem
Photo by: L. Propes

This collection of space-themed poems have a bouncy rhythm that lends itself to reading aloud either in a solo or choral reading.  Florian uses rhyme schemes throughout the poems, but they don't necessarily follow a consistent pattern.  I find that this contributes to the bouncy pace of the poems and prevents them from falling into a sing-song pattern.  The poems are so short that any sort of regular rhyme scheme would almost guarantee that the poems' "voices" would sound repetitious.  The poem "The Solar System" is a perfect example of this: "Each planet orbits around the sun / (A somewhat circular path). / To calculate the time it takes / Requires lots of math" (Florian 2007, 12).  Florian makes a wise choice by choosing an irregular rhyme scheme for these poems.  The brevity of the poems sometimes stand in direct contrast to the size of the subject of the poem.  In "Jupiter", the lines of the poem itself are quite short, mostly one to two words long, but the painting of the planet Jupiter fills the two-page spread, giving the reader a sense of the enormity of the planet.  Florian mentions that while Jupiter is a large planet, it has a low density.  This would be a great way to introduce the concept of density and how an object's size is not correlated to its density.

One of the drawings
of a constellation
Photo by: L. Propes

The poems are definitely appealing to younger children, with its short, punchy rhythms.  I can easily imagine students seat-dancing while reciting these poems.  The book skews toward the younger grades, but older students might enjoy seeing and hearing the poems in a science class as an introduction to astronomy.  They might also enjoy picking out the physical features of the planets and other celestial objects featured in the artwork.  This book really makes a case for taking poetry beyond the environs of an English classroom.  The artwork does a great deal to enhance the poetry and teach a few things about space.  The painting that accompanies the poem "The Black Hole" deftly and simply illustrates how black holes work.  "The Constellations" includes illustrations of the different constellations, and the poem simply describes what each constellation represents: "Leo is a lion. / Lepus is a hare. / Cancer is a crab. / Ursa Major is a bear" (Florian 2007, 41).  Children can learn the meanings of words like "gaseous" and "frigid" in an organic manner, because it relates directly to deepening their understanding of the poem.  It's also just a great way to introduce space and astronomy to any grade level.  I can see a teacher sharing a new poem each day while the students add that particular element to a model of scale drawing of the solar system.

Part of the planet Neptune
Photo by L. Propes

The poems are universally well-done.  The book is a carefully considered and crafted fusion of words and art.  True, the words can live without the art, but the artwork is the icing on the cake made of words.  Not entirely necessary, but it enhances the overall flavor.  Florian takes a multi-layered approach to the artwork so that students of all ages and abilities can enjoy and learn from it.  Some students might notice that the name of the planet forms a frame around the page, or that the drawing of the Sun contains the word "sun" in different languages.  The tone of the book creates a child-like sense of wonder and aw about space and astronomy.  Florian manages to give each planet its own personality, and even evokes a feeling of sympathy for Pluto: "Pluto was a planet. / Pluto was admired. / Pluto was a planet. / Til one day it got fired" (2014, 37).  In a few short brushstrokes, Florian manages to succinctly depict Pluto's ignominious demotion from planet to a so-called dwarf planet.

Another detail of the painting
with the poem "Neptune"
Photo by: L. Propes

Florian includes several access features to facilitate use of the book.  It has a table of contents, a glossary for each poem that contains a little more detailed information about each planet or celestial phenomena, and a bibliography and suggested readings for more information.  Each poem has a title heading at the top of each poem, printed in brightly coloured font, which makes it easy to find a poem, if a reader is casually flipping through the book.  Even the arrangement of the poems are done in a logical order from the entire nighttime sky to the universe, galaxies, the solar system, the sun, the planets in order from Mercury to Pluto, then miscellaneous elements of space like comets and constellations, which also makes it an accessible resource for a class or small group who are constructing a scale model of the solar system.

This would make a perfect addition to any school library, primary and secondary.  It would also be an excellent addition to any English or science classroom library.  Florian also has created a Poetry Kit to accompany his book in classroom lessons.

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Spotlight on...

"Jupiter"

Jupiter's jumbo,
Gigantic,
Immense,
So wide
Side to side,
But gaseous, not dense.
With some sixty moons
It's plainly prolific --
So super-dupiter
Jupiterrific!  (Florian 2007, 28)

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I would use this poem to introduce a lesson about density in a middle grade classroom. (Surprise! Not a lesson about astronomy!)  I find the poem gives a beautiful explanation about how size and density are not always related.  A large object does not always have a high density.  I would read the poem, and pass around a few objects whose size is inversely proportional to their size, just like Jupiter.  Students then complete a lab measuring the density of various objects and compare their volume against their density.

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Works Cited

Florian, Douglas. 2007. Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars. New York: Harcourt.

'Brown Girl Dreaming' by Jacqueline Woodson (LS 5663)

Woodson, Jacqueline. 2014. Brown Girl Dreaming. New York: Nancy Paulson Books.

ISBN: 978-0-399-25251-8

Book cover courtesy of
www.penguin.com

Jacqueline Woodson's memoir of her childhood, Brown Girl Dreaming, was published to universal acclaim and immediately made the short list for major children's and young adult literature awards.  Woodson's lyrical and moving account of her childhood won the 2014 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and has been named by School Library Journal as one of the best nonfiction titles for children and teens in 2014.   It is, in my opinion,  a shoo-in to win a Newbery (or at the very least a Newbery Honor).

Woodson's memoir examines the many dualities of her early life.  South Carolina versus Brooklyn, New York.  Raised as a Jehovah's Witness by her grandmother, but privately skeptical.  Desperate to write down the stories swirling in her head and hampered by dyslexia.  Binding the series of poems together is a thread of familial love and devotion.  It ends with a few reflective poems where Woodson ruminates on her personal journey and how all the dichotomies that have formed her journey have helped shape who she is today.

Most of the poems are written in free verse, but Woodson peppers the novel with several haiku.  The haiku are often meditations or some other realization in response to the events surrounding the young Jacqueline.  By writing those small moments in haiku, it sets them apart from the longer free verse poems.  The structural brevity of the haiku gives Woodson's thoughts in those moments a measure of profundity and emotional depth out of all proportion to their size.  Several of the haiku are series titled "How To Listen".  The third in the series simply describes her grandfather's coughing fit in the middle of the night and Woodson's reaction to it, but the ominous air around the poem is palpable.  The final word of the poem -- "startled" -- is written as a sentence by itself, which helps create the sense of unease in the poem.

Overall, the poems have a sense of immediacy.  We experience Greenville of the 1960s and later Brooklyn of the 1970s through Woodson's eyes in a first-person narrative.  This is illustrated with brutal honesty in two separate poems: "How To Listen #2" and "The Fabric Store".  In both poems, Woodson paints a picture about her experiences shopping in Greenville.  She writes of store clerks following her or her grandmother around the store "in case they try to / steal something" because of their skin color (Woodson 2014, 90).  Woodson also deftly uses the poems to demonstrate the difficulty of straddling two cultures as a child -- the religious upbringing of her childhood and her own skepticism, returning to Greenville after living in Brooklyn for a while, learning to realize the difference between orally telling stories (and having them thought lies) and writing them down and having them recognized (and lauded) as fiction.  Woodson's poems perfectly capture the bemusement of a child at having someone mock their style of speech or the confusion at a teacher's disappointment that she isn't more like her older sister.

Woodson subtly scatters figurative speech throughout the poems in Brown Girl Dreaming.  In "Second Daughter's Second Day", she juxtaposes the image of her baby hands against the hands of several civil rights figures:

     I do not know if these hands will become
     Malcom's -- raised and fisted
     or Martin's -- open and asking
     or James's -- curled around a pen.
     I do not know if these hands will be
                            Rosa's
                        or Ruby's
                     gently gloved
                and fiercely folded
                   calmly in a lap,
                       on a desk,
                   around a book,
                          ready
                to change the world... (Woodson 2014, 5)

This juxtaposition serves to allow Woodson to look back and wonder what her hands will accomplish, born in the turmoil of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.  Woodson also effectively uses simile to give her poems a richness of sensory language.  She describes her grandparents' love as a blanket, enveloping Woodson and her brother and sister in its warmth.  In the poem "Hair Night", Woodson (2014) compares her sister's voice to "a hand on my shoulder" as Odella reads aloud to the young Jacqueline while their grandmother does Woodson's hair on Saturday night (84).  The figurative language seems to come organically in the poems.  The words aren't flowery or flamboyant, but they still effectively create a sense of what Woodson felt, saw, heard, or otherwise experienced as a child.  Probably the best and most visual use of figurative language in the novel occurs when stories first begin to swirl through Woodson's imagination, begging for her to write them down.  She uses personification to describe the stories that appear in her head saying, "The story / wakes up and walks all over the room.  Sits in a chair, / crosses one leg over the other, says / Let me introduce myself. Then just starts going on and on" (Woodson 2014, 217).  As a sometime writer, I can say that Woodson's description of the moment when something pops into your head, and insists that you write it down right now, thank you, is spot on.

Woodson also judiciously uses pauses in her poetry.  They're purposeful and built into the poems to allow the moment to percolate and roll around on the tongue and in the brain of the reader.  The pauses help set certain words and phrases apart from the rest of the poems.  Generally, these are nuggets of insight the adult Woodson can see in the events of her childhood.

The book should appeal to middle grades.  The free verse format of the poems can often make you forget you're reading poetry at all.  Woodson's language is accessible, but she doesn't condescend to her juvenile audience.  In fact, there are several moments where Woodson couches issues like learning disabilities or fatal illnesses in so much figurative language that an older or more observant younger reader will immediately understand what Woodson is saying.  Those moments are few and far between, so it won't make younger readers feel as if they can't follow the main plot lines of the novel.  The book will also appeal to adult readers and older students who enjoy reading memoirs.  To most students, Woodson's childhood is simultaneously unfamiliar with its historical setting in the 1960s and 1970s and yet the struggles to read, the delight in finding a book with characters who looked like her, the bullying at the hands of other children in Greenville are all familiar topics to many young readers.  The memoir can also offer readers insight into the civil rights era from the point-of-view of a child.  Younger readers might also appreciate learning about the civil rights era from a narrator that is their age and learning about Woodson's personal experiences with racism.

All of the poems are uniformly excellent.  There is not a single poem that feels out of place in this novel.  Even the last two poems, which are written from the perspective of the adult Woodson feel organic and natural in their place at the end of the novel.  The two poems before the last two serve as a bridge between Woodson's childhood and how it has informed the outlook she now has as an adult.

The novel contains a brief table of contents.  It doesn't list all the poems, which makes it difficult to track down a specific poem.  Woodson divided the memoir into five parts, and the table of contents lists those parts.  It also includes a family tree that includes four generations of Woodson's family.  Woodson also includes family photos of her parents, various aunts and uncles, her grandparents, and her two brothers and sister.  All readers will enjoy being able to put faces to the names in the book.

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Spotlight on...

"Hope Onstage"

Until the curtain comes up and he's standing there,
ten years old and alone in the center of the P.S. 106 stage,
no one knew
my big brother could sing.  He is dressed
     as a shepherd, his voice
soft and low, more sure than any sound I've ever heard
come out of him.  My quiet big brother
     who only speaks
when asked, has little to say to any of us, except
when he's talking about science or comic books, now
has a voice that is circling the air,
landing clear and sweet around us.

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

Maybe, I am thinking, there is something hidden
like this, in all of us.  A small gift from the universe
waiting to be discovered. (Woodson 2014, 232-233)

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 Throughout Brown Girl Dreaming, Woodson struggles to live up to the scholastic examples of her older brother Hope and older sister Odella.  Both Hope and Odella were excellent students in school, and Woodson often describes how easy learning came to them and how much she struggled with school.  She also details the disappointment her teachers visibly felt once they realized that she was not going to be a model student, like Odella.  We all know how it feels to be compared to someone else -- to our siblings, our classmates -- but like Woodson says in "Hope Onstage" we can all do something well.

What is your gift?  Can you cook, draw, dance, sing, build things with Legos or Tinker Toys?  Do you work well with small children? (And believe me, that is a gift!)  Can you envision the way a building should look?  Fix cars?  Tell us about it.

Write a poem, a story, an essay, or even draw a picture that describes your gift.  You can even share a moment when you realized you had this particular gift.  Students who are willing to share can upload their work to the class blog or give an oral presentation to the class.

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Works Cited

Woodson, Jacqueline. 2014. Brown Girl Dreaming. New York: Nancy Paulson Books.

'The Brimstone Journals' by Ron Koertge (LS 5663)

Koertge, Ron. 2001. The Brimstone Journals. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

ISBN: 978-0-7636-1742-4

Photo of book cover
by L. Propes

The Brimstone Journals is a verse novel by Ron Koertge set in the fictional suburban Branston High School, although the students refer to it as Brimstone, a sly observation of their feelings about high school in general.   It's almost more of a novella than an outright novel due to its brevity.  The book features ninety journal entries over 110 pages in the form of poems written by fifteen different students at Branston.    The students at Branston could appear anywhere at any high school: Boyd, neglected by an absent and alcoholic father; Lester, the frequently bullied fat kid; Carter, the son of wealthy surgeon and the new kid at Branston; Tran, the son of Vietnamese immigrants, pushed into pursuing a course of study he hates; Damon, the football star and stereotypical jock; Kelli, Damon's girlfriend, chafing under his rules; Sheila, a girl in love with her best friend Meredith and questioning her sexuality; Joseph, the son of fervent environmentalists; Jennifer, the evangelical Christian struggling to reconcile her faith with what she sees at school; Kitty, an anorexic; Allison, who has to put up with her stepfather's sexual advances toward her; Rob, Branston's resident ladies' man; Neesha, who at first glance is the stereotypical angry African-American girl; Dave, who is a dedicated gamer, despite his parents'  worries that it will turn him to violence; and Meredith, the girl who dates older men and has a reputation.  There are a lot of characters in such a short book.

The journal entries offer brief glimpses of the students' lives in and out of school over the course of a single year.  One could argue, though, with an average of six poems per narrator, whether or not the paucity of the journal entries can do more than just skim the surface of the students and the culture within Branston.  For the most part, The Brimstone Journals features several storylines at Branston.  The primary storyline that weaves its way through most of the others involves Boyd and his deepening involvement with Mike, a white supremacist.  Another storyline is Carter's struggle to fit in with students at Branston.  Dave's arguments with his parents that while he does play violent video games, he has absolutely no urges to actually commit crimes and his dreams to become a video game designer and developer.  There is also Tran's lonely journey through high school, weighed down by the expectations of his family, but who forges a connection with Carter through shared love of music. Kelli wants to end her relationship with Damon as he grows increasingly possessive.  The novella itself is so brief, that I fear I've given away the entire plot, such as it were.

Photo of text
by L. Propes

That being said, the surface-skimming quality of the novella is both a strength and a weakness.  Koertge's strategy of spreading the wealth, as it were, among so many students offers a wealth of issues students can discuss.  They span everything from trying to live up to parental expectations to sexual abuse by parental figures to the double-standard by which boys and girls are judged based on their sexual activity.  There is nothing in these poems that treads unfamiliar territory to the average high school student.  On the other hand though, with so many characters it's difficult to get to know any of them in depth.  It also serves to lessen the emotional investment for the reader.  For example, when we first meet Boyd, his father has been verbally abusing him, and then the next time we see Boyd, he's met Mike and is utterly entranced by Mike's racist rantings.  It often feels as if there is a huge jump from A to D and the readers are left trying to construct B and C with few or no details.  There are several characters whose presence is so fleeting that I found myself saying, "Who?" more than once as I read the novella.  In all honesty, Rob, Kitty, Jennifer, Sheila, and Joseph could be removed from the pages and the book's quality would not suffer.  I would even go so far as to call Rob, Jennifer, Kitty and Sheila non-entities as far as the plot is concerned, especially Kitty.  She's barely a blip on the radar, which is how things do work in the social structure of high schools, but she adds so little to the overall tone of the novella, that she might as well not be in it.  Then again, it could be a rather tortured way to symbolize her vanishing body due to her anorexia.  If that was Koertge's intention, it might pass over the heads of many readers.  At most, they provide background color for the rest of the poems.

All of the poems were written by Koertge.  The novella is a quick read and most of the free-verse poems are a quarter to a half page long.  The fluid structure of the free-verse reflects the inner voices of the teenagers who appear on the page and comes off as a natural structure of the characters' thoughts.  Neesha's poems have a rhythmic quality about them, which is not surprising, considering she is a student of the history of rap and hip-hop.  Koertge makes her poems come alive on the page and you can feel the rhythm as you say them.  Koertge also uses pauses built into the poems to create emphasis on certain lines.  Kelli ends her relationship with Damon and describes what happens when she comes home from watching a movie without Damon: "When I got home Mom said Damon / called / three times" (Koertge 2001, 35).  He adds a space between the last two lines to set the number of times Damon called apart from the other lines.  It adds a slight sense of tension, and provides an opportunity for the reader to question just what Kelli feels in that moment.  Is it dread? Alarm?  Panic?  Apprehension?  Is she waiting for the other shoe to drop?  Often the pauses in the poems resemble that moment where the narrator takes a sharp intake of breath and the emotion builds, albeit briefly, because the novella quickly moves on to the next poem.  The poems are an unflinching look at the students' lives and rarely descend into sentimentality.  The book is purported to be an inside look at the lives of fifteen high school students and the poems reflect that.  I do have to give Koertge a lot of credit.  He manages to make the fifteen narrators distinct from one another with a unique perspective and point of view.

The poems will appeal to some older middle grades (probably Grade 8 and some Grade 7 students) and to high school readers who will likely find themselves or someone they know on the pages of The Brimstone Journals.   Reluctant readers might like The Brimstone Journals.  It's intellectually demanding due to the topics that are brought up in its pages, but the poems are easily accessible and the free-verse structure might make students forget they're even reading poetry at all.  The poems skip  randomly from character to character, but it's not as confusing as it might seem.  The top of each page has the signature of the student who wrote the journal entry, as seen on the introduction page.  The poems are printed in a regular typeface, but I wonder how the overall effect would have changed if they had printed the poems in the penmanship of the writer.  It might have helped personalized the poems.

There are a few examples of figurative language in the poems, but by and large, Koertge uses ordinary language, and as a result the poems don't necessarily "feel" like poetry.  Lester and Tran's poems have the best examples of figurative language.  Lester employs metaphors as he compares his body to a "big bag of fries and Coke and pepperoni" (Koertge 2001, 3).  Lester also describes the football players coming down the hallway "like a tidal wave of muscle" (Koertge 2001, 36).  That single phrase evokes the image of a hallway filled with larger-than-life football players, rolling over everything in their path.  It's an effective image.  Tran's language overall is so picturesque that his poems are the most emotional of the fifteen narrators.  His status as an outsider gives him the opportunity to observe his classmates.  He describes them as "attractive, but still insatiable" ghosts (Koertge 2001, 37).  Tran refers to himself as "an anthology of [his father's] ghosts", burdened by the responsibility of doing what his parents want, rather than following his own dreams.  Tran's poetic voice even renders gossip as something striking rather than lurid.  He says, "I listen to what is traveling through wires, / dripping from overhead lighting, radiating / from computer screens, oozing from outlets / in walls" (Koertge 2001, 28).

The poems are not titled and are only distinguishable from one another by the heading that contains the name of the narrator at the top.  It has no table of contents or index.  This tends to make it slightly difficult to track down a specific poem and the reader ends up having to leaf through the entire book to find the exact moment they want to read or use.  It's a bit annoying.

I do want to take a moment to mention the cover.  It's chilling in its design, given the context of the novella.  The main plotline deals with a planned school shooting. It looks like a page ripped from a high school yearbook.  One young man's face is washed with red ink or watercolor paint, while the faces of the surrounding students have been scratched out with the point of scissors or a black pen.  The cover sets a provocative tone to start the novella.

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Spotlight On...

Lester

I'm about half sick to my stomach all
the time because I'm scared.

Those jocks come down the hall like
a tidal wave of muscle.  On a good day
they only knock me into the wall once.

The time Damon smashed a Twinkie
in my face I went to the office and
ratted him out.

I could see Mr. Newman look at his
calendar and think, The game's tomorrow 
night.

But he said, "I'll talk to him, Lester.  We'll
make sure this doesn't happen again."

Next time it was a Ding Dong instead
of a Twinkie.  Damon said if I opened
my big mouth, I was a goner.

(Koertge 2001, 36)

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Lester's poem about the constant bullying he experiences at the hands of Damon and the other football players offers an opportunity to discuss bullying, especially in the context of Anti-Bullying Week/Bullying Awareness Week.  I would have copies available for the students to read and read it aloud a few times.  Ideally, I would want the students to write and present short skits about what they would do if they saw Damon bully Lester.  Would they approach Damon or Lester?  What would they say?  This would also be a great chance to use social media, as Bullying Awareness Week in Canada has a Twitter presence and a hashtag: #BAW2015.  Students could use a school or teacher created Twitter account to tweet responses to Lester's poem with the BAW hashtag.

This is absolutely the kind of poem where a responsive Web 2.0 platform would come in handy for a teacher.  The students could create a class wiki or a blog that discusses bullying and methods they have found that works to curb or alleviate bullying in their schools or classrooms.  They could share their blog or wiki with another school and engage in a meaningful discussion with each other.

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Works Cited

Koertge, Ron. 2001. The Brimstone Journals. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

'All the World's a Stage' edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, illustrated by Guy Billout (LS 5663)

Hopkins, Lee Bennett, ed. 2013. All the World's a Stage. Illustrated by Guy Billout. Mankato, MN: Creative Editions.

ISBN: 987-1-56846-218-9

Photo of cover by L. Propes

All the World's a Stage is a compilation of twenty-one short poems by Lee Bennett Hopkins that relate in some way to one of the seven ages of man, as described in the famous "All the World's a Stage" speech from William Shakespeare's play As You Like It.  The book is divided into seven parts, each linked to one of the ages of man detailed in the speech: "the infant... the whining school-boy... the lover... a soldier..." middle age, the beginnings of old age, and finally one who is elderly and infirm.  Three poems, each by a different poet, illustrate or expand upon each age.  The poems are sparsely accompanied with whimsical drawings by Guy Billout, with about two drawings per age.  The poets represented on the pages range from well known nineteenth-century poets like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Walt Whitman to more modern poets like J. Patrick Lewis and Janet S. Wong.  Bennett includes other less-well known (at least to me) poets like Madeleine Comora and Joan Bransfield Graham.

Bennett and Billout introduce each age with a two-page illustration that depicts the age in question with a quote from the "All the World's a Stage" monologue.  The illustrations feature the "one man in his time" -- a baby crawling across the floor, investigating the space, a soldier sitting under a tree, with his head resting on his drawn-up knees, clearly exhausted, and an old man with a cane in the exact same room as the baby in the first drawing, representing the cyclical nature of life as laid out in Shakespeare's monologue.  Some of the drawings with the poems themselves are specific to the theme of one of the poems, and others do more to capture the mood of age.

Photo of Billout drawing by L. Propes

The majority of the poems won't necessarily appeal to a young audience, despite the picture book format of the book.  Some of the poems will appeal to younger audiences, but a librarian or teacher needs to choose carefully.  "You and Me" by Rebecca Kai Dotlich touches on a common experience with children when their parents bring home a new baby brother or sister.  "Now" by Prince Redcloud will appeal to all students, with its brief, but poignant, lamentation that summer is ending and school will begin soon, especially at the beginning of the school year.  Most of the poems will, with a thoughtful introduction, appeal to some middle grade students and many high school students.  Some of the themes, especially as the "man in his time" ages, might be too mature for some middle grades, and yet, some middle grade students might understand it perfectly.  Again, it is incumbent on the teacher and/or librarian to carefully consider their audience and choose the poems to share accordingly.

Photo of Billout drawing by L. Propes

The poems touch on a variety of subjects: the thrill of a first touch by a crush, a father's elation at finally leaving a combat zone to see his new baby daughter, the loneliness of an old woman during the holidays, and ageing in general.  The poems are all excellent expansions of the themes of the "All the World's a Stage" monologue and rarely wallow in sentiment, unless the mood behind poem calls for it.  Overall, the poems also present a wide range of moods -- somber, exasperated, loving, contemplative.  The poems are generally fairly short, but they offer students a chance to expand their figurative language skills.  The poem "Years" by Cynthia Cotten, in particular allows teachers to provide easily digestible examples of figurative language, such as comparing the memories of an elderly person to fluttering butterflies.  "Take a Lump of Clay" by Kuan Tao-Sheng compares a married couple to statues that have been broken to pieces, the shards mixed together, and combined into statues once more, this time made up of bits of each other.  Some of the poems have a more meditative quality than others, but other poems, like "Winter Rabbit" by Madeleine Comora which portrays a child's first experience with death, have an emotional impact that is quiet on the surface, but gives a reader the opportunity to explore the emotional depths underneath.  Some of the poems make good use of rhythm to emphasize certain lines or highlight a specific mood, which is seen best in "Eighty-Eight" by Lee Bennett Hopkins.  Hopkins skillfully uses pauses to illustrate the bleakness of the old woman's situation as she celebrates a lonely Christmas.  The pauses in "Now" coupled with short sentences and a staccato rhythm reflect the inevitable sadness of the end of summer and the beginning of school.

The book contains several access features for ease of use.  It has a table of contents and three indices where a reader can look up poets by author, title, or first line.

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Spotlight On...


"Memory Trees" by Kate Coombs

It started when she was a girl
and the neighbour boy died in France.
My great-aunt planted a tree
In memory of her friend, Lance.

Photo of Billout drawing by L. Propes

"Every time I turn around,"
she says, "there's another war.
Grace just lost her grandson,
and I know there'll be more."

My great-aunt has an orchard.
To me all the trees look the same.
But she touches every trunk we pass
and tells me each one's name.

(2013, 20)
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All three of the poems in the section titled "Act Four: War" are actually perfect for use with Veteran's Day/Remembrance Day, but "Memory Trees" is the best one out of the three.  I would introduce the poem by asking students how we remember soldiers who have died, and hopefully the students will make the connections to Veteran's Day/Remembrance Day ceremonies and tangible reminders of soldiers and others that have lost their lives in times of conflict (the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., the cenotaph in Victory Square in downtown Vancouver, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, for example).

I would next read the poem once and give the students a few minutes to think about it, then read it a few more times.  I would give the students a few minutes to reflect on the poem, perhaps jotting down a few thoughts in a journal.

As an activity, I would ask the students to think about how they remember people in their lives who have died or live far away.  It can be a family member or a close friend.  The students would then write a poem (format of their choice) that reflects it.  The poem needs to clearly reflect how and what the students do to remember someone special to them.  An example of this could include a poem about baking a grandmother's signature pie recipe or the event behind a photo with a best friend who lives far away.  If the class wanted, they could use a Web 2.0 tool like Storybird to compile their poems into a book.

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Coombs, Kate. 2013. "Memory Trees." All the World's a Stage. Edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins. Illustrated by Guy Billout, 20. Mankato, MN: Creative Editions.