Performance Poetry

Greenfield, Eloise. 2006. The Friendly Four. Ill. by Jan Spivey Gilchrist. New York: Harper Collins Children’s Books. ISBN: 978-0-06-000760-7.

Book Review:

Award-winning children’s author, Eloise Greenfield (Coretta Scott King Award and NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry, to name a few), adds a poetry book designed for choral reading to her body of work in The Friendly Four, illustrated with creativity, movement and color by Jan Spivey Gilchrist.

Four children -Drum, Doreen, Louis and Rae – gravitate together for one summer of play, imagination and friendship, easing their loneliness and finding joy in their fellowship.  Drum says, “Didn’t I call this summer a bummer?” And his three new friends reply “Not anymore, not anymore.”  Using a combination of verse poetry and rhyming schemes, Greenfield gives unique voices to each of her characters.  The book is written with different colored type to differentiate the voices of each child, and to make it easier to read chorally. 

As each of the children meet, they bring more creativity and imagination to their play, and as a group, engage in telling tall tales, playing board games, fun at the playground and even constructing a town named “Goodsummer” to play in with a bank, a movie theatre, a school, a pet shop and a library.  When the town is completed they have a parade: “We turned the music way up loud/to show you that we’re happy and proud/of all the work we did to build our town./Now watch as we march around…”

Not a TV or video game is found in Gilchrist’s realistic watercolors which bring additional life to the characters in the book and provide visual interest in the action portrayed by the author’s words.  The book and illustrations remind the older reader of bygone days when summer meant playing outside all day long. 

Sharing the Poetry:

This book would provide a great poetry break near the end of the school year to remind the students or story time visitors of the coming months of fun.  It is also a good introduction to verse poetry for younger children.  Choosing four children to read, or dividing the room into four groups would both work well.  The children in the book are early elementary age, and the dialogue reflects that, so teachers/librarians need to keep that in mind when they choose this title.

Selected Poem:

Near the end of summer, Rae has to leave on a plane to go back home.  In the last poem in the book, “Goodbye to Goodsummer,” the remaining three friends reflect on their time together:

Goodbye to Goodsummer

Drum:                             The summer started out with one,

Dorene:                          and now there are four, and even though

                                      one of us is far away,

Drum, Dorene, Louis:    we’re still together.

                                      We’ll find some fall, winter

                                      and spring things to laugh about,

Louis:                             and our town will wait for us.

Drum, Dorene, Louis:    So, goodbye for now, Goodsummer.

                                      We’ll see you next year.

References

Books in Print. n.d. The Friendly Four. http://ezproxy.twu.edu:3959/DetailedView.aspx?hreciid=|16314793|10204039&mc=USA# (accessed April 21, 2014).

Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database. n.d. The Friendly Four. http://ezproxy.twu.edu:4529/index.php/jbookdetail/jqbookdetail?page=1&pos=1&isbn=9780060007591 (accessed April 21, 2014).

Hopkins Award Poetry

Coombs Kate. 2012. Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems.  Ill. by Meilo So. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. ISBN: 978-0-811-872384-3

Book Review:

In her first book of poetry, Kate Coombs hit the ball out of the park, winning the prestigious Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award in 2013.  And it’s not difficult to see why - her 23 poems wonderfully evoke images from the teeming life found in the ocean. One can almost see the tide “wavy and clear,/saying “Don’t forget me -/I was here/wasss here/wassss here”

Exploring ocean topics such as boats, sand, tide pools, waves, shells, and driftwood, and sea animals such as seagulls, jellyfish, sea urchins, sharks, eels, whales and octopi, Coombs writes a love song to the largest area covering the earth.

Meilo So’s watercolor illustrations bring out the best in these poems, providing visual images to the beautiful descriptions provided by Coombs.  Watery (of course) blues, grays and sand brown colors, as well as meandering images of the topics covered in the poems, allow the reader to envision and experience ocean scenes even in the midst of dry land.

Using various rhyme schemes and some blank verse, Coombs uses her words as a paint brush and playfully brushes words across the page, telling tales of sand, who used to be rock, shopping in tide pools, the prayer of a little fish hiding from a shark, the epic song of driftwood, and the epitaph of a ship wreck: “Here lie the bones/of twenty trees,/lost far from home/under gallons of seas.”

The author grew up near the Pacific Ocean and clearly knows her subject.  With this book of poems she shares her love of the sea with her readers which allows us to view our watery world in a new and interesting way: “For the water sings blue and the sky does, too,/and the sea lets you fly like a gull.”

Sharing the Poetry:

This collection of poems would fit right in as a poetry break in a unit on the ocean, or as an example of a poet’s use of visual imagery in a poetry unit. Readers can feel the sand beneath their toes, hear the cry of the seagulls, see the beautiful, yet deadly, lines of the jellyfish and smell the salt on the air in these poems.  Using Coombs examples, students could try their hand at evoking images from other landscapes.  The world abounds in beautiful imagery just waiting to be explored with words!

Selected Poem:

I loved the personification of Driftwood telling a tale of his adventures in Coombs' poem “Old  Driftwood:

Old Driftwood

Old Driftwood

 has been to sea

   and come back home

     unexpectedly.

          Gnarled sailor,

            now he sits high

              upon the beach

                beyond the tide,

                   telling of mermaids

                     and whales thi-i-is big

                       to all the attentive

                             astonished twigs.

References:

Books in Print. n.d. Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems. http://ezproxy.twu.edu:3959/DetailedView.aspx?hreciid=|32952310|41018420&mc=USA# (accessed April 18, 2014).

Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database. n.d. Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems. http://ezproxy.twu.edu:4529/index.php/jbookdetail/jqbookdetail?page=1&pos=0&isbn=9780811872843 (accessed April 18, 2014).    

Joyce Sidman Poetry

Sidman, Joyce. 2009. Red Sings from the Treetops: A Year in Colors. Ill. by Pamela Zagarenski. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children. ISBN: 978-0-547-01494-4.

Book Review:

Award-winning poet Joyce Sidman (Songs of the Water Boatman and Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night) joyfully takes the reader through the seasons in poems focusing on the colors found in nature throughout the year in her book Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors.

Beginning in Spring, when “red sings from treetops: cheer-cheer-cheer” like a bird, Sidman takes the reader on a poetic journey through Summer, Fall and finally Winter when red appears again in the poem on the last page.  Then, the metaphoric “red hops to treetops [and] fluffs its feathers against the cold. Cheer-cheer-cheer, it begins to sing…”

This eloquent author has a way with words, providing wonderful visual images through her descriptions of the colors found in each season, even ones you wouldn't expect, like pink in Winter: “Pink prickles: warm fingers against cold cheeks,” describing the tingling warmth our fingers feel after being too long in the snow.

Pamela Zagarenski’s illustrations, using a combination of mixed media on wood, computer illustrations, fabric patterns and bits of newsprint, add texture and provide images to flesh out the words of the poems. There is a surreal quality to her characters and figures in the illustrations, and her use of color, some muted, some bright, evokes the passing of the seasons as well as the author’s words.

Without the illustrations, some of the poems would be more difficult to comprehend, which indeed makes the marriage of poet and illustrator a successful one.  Images of purple and yellow flowers let the reader better understand that when the author writes, “In spring, Yellow and Purple hold hands/They beam at each other/with bright velvet faces” that she is referring to spring flowers.  In the summer, “white clinks in drinks./Yellow melts everything it touches,"…and Zagarenski gives us images of two friends drinking from cups with ice and eating corn dripping in butter.

After spending time browsing through this wonderful poetry picture book, I dare anyone to not see the colors of the seasons in a new and surprising way.

Sharing the Poetry:

Books about seasons abound for younger children, and this one could be successfully used to complement a study on the seasons along with informative books such as Seasons by Patricia Ryon Quiri or Nature’s Paintbox: a Seasonal Gallery of Art and Verse by Patricia Thomas.  Children could then pick their favorite season, illustrate a picture themselves, or perhaps try their hand at a writing a descriptive seasonal poem.

Selected Poem:

These poems are so delightful, it is hard to choose just one, so I am providing portions of poems from each season:

Spring:

Yellow slips goldfinches

their spring jackets.

Yellow shouts with light!

Summer:

And where is Blue?

Humming, shimmering,

snoozing in the lazy haze.

Dancing on water

with Yellow and Green.

In summer

Blue grows new names:

turquoise,  

          azure,

                   cerulean.

Fall:

In fall,

Yellow grows wheels

and lumbers

down the block,

blinking:

Warning --- classrooms ahead.

Winter:

Where is Green in winter?

Green darkens, shrinks,

stiffens into needles.

Green waits

in the hearts of trees,

feeling

the earth

turn.

References:

Books in Print. n.d Red Sings from Treetops: a year in colors. http://ezproxy.twu.edu:3959/DetailedView.aspx?hreciid=|29713541|31168094&mc=USA# (accessed April 18, 2014).

Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database. n.d. http://ezproxy.twu.edu:4529/index.php/booksearch/display?page=1 (accessed April 18, 2014).

Biographical Poetry

Medina, Tony. 2009. I and I. Ill. by Jesse Joshua Watson. New York: Lee & Low Books, Inc. ISBN: 978-1-60060-257-3.

Book Reviews:

In I and I, author Tony Medina creatively provides a way for a new generation to learn about reggae music and the message of peace promoted by singer Bob Marley.  The title “I and I” refers to the Jamaican use of the words which can mean a reference to oneself, the unity of God (whom the Rastafarian’s call “Jah”), or the plural “we.” 

The book opens with an author’s note that provides an excellent summary of Bob Marley and his music.  It then goes on to present the story of the singer’s life in chronological order in a series of verse and rhyming poems filled with the colloquial patois of Jamaica. Medina prepares the reader for the poems by saying, “Bob Marley was a messenger-poet-musician in the tradition of the West African griot, who passes on the history of his people and comments on current events through story-telling and song.” The author weaves Marley’s lyrics into his poems, but those unfamiliar with the songs may not recognize them.

Jesse Joshua Watson’s realistic acrylic paintings accompany each poem, showing the lush beauty as well as the abject poverty in which Marley grew up.  The expressive faces shown in the illustrations provide the reader with a visual representation of the characters referenced in the poems.

Born to a white English soldier father and a Jamaican mother, Marley was raised by his mother’s people in an area called Nine Miles. The singer was very aware of his biracial heritage and struggled with discrimination because of it. “Papa is a white man, so I’ve been told/My map a face of Africa in Europe’s hold.” Marley’s experiences with poverty and oppression in his early years and his exposure to blues, jazz, R& B, along with Jamaican ska, impacted his music.  Medina writes, “Be the voice of the voiceless/Bring some happiness and/Consciousness to the down-pressed/Through our redemption songs.”

Marley used his music to send a message of peace in a time of political unrest in his country and that opened up a chance for him to travel all over the world in the 80’s sharing his vision of justice and equality wherever he went. “My songs cry out that Black blood shall spill no more/And that African unity/Must increase/War is a cancer that turns/Everything upside down/Love is the answer/Where peace is found.” Marley was awarded the United Nations Medal of Peace in 1978.

Though Bob Marley died very young, at age 36, his music and the legend of his life continue to live on in succeeding generations. His message was simple and his music had wide appeal.  “I am a Rasta man/a troubadour for everyman/singing what a Rasta sings/one love, one heart, one song.” 

Tony Medina’s love-song to Bob Marley in I and I is a tremendous undertaking; however, the poems would have a wider appeal if he had included the end notes for each poem on the poem’s page, rather than at the end of the book.  Including the biographical information with each poem would give the reader a fuller understanding of what the author was trying to express in his poetry.

Sharing the Poetry:

Using biographies in school curriculum is very popular, and for good reason.  Students have an opportunity to learn research techniques with both print materials and e-resources, are exposed to historical figures and events and can practice their writing skills.  Giving students a chance to learn about musical legends such as Bob Marley would be a nice change from researching presidents, inventors and scientists. 

Selected Poem:

Most of the poems in I and I are fairly long. The final poem in the book, “Song in my Heart” nicely summarizes the story of the life of Bob Marley and his music.

Song in My Heart

I am the boy

          From Nine Miles

The one sing

          Like three little birds

                   In a reggae style

The one blessed

          By Jah

                   To travel miles

Across the world

          With my island girl

                   Guitar in hand

And my dreads

          Atwirl

With music

          In my belly

And songs

          In my heart

Healing the world

          With my reggae art

Keeping you always

          Like a song

                   In my heart

  

 References

Books in Print. n.d. I and I. http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2125/DetailedView.aspx?hreciid=|25043023|23620477&mc=USA# (accessed April 1, 2014).