Book Sharing Monday - Poetry books

Since April is poetry month, I thought I'd share some of the poetry books we think are worth keeping on our shelves.  I just realized that my fluorescent orange copy of Chief Modern Poets of Britain and America is missing from this photo, as is Leaves of Grass.  Those are in with the classic literature in the study, but for some reason Antonia Fraser's Scottish Love Poems is on with a shelf of mostly kid-friendly titles!

For learning about poetry, we have Michael Clay Thompson's Music of the Hemispheres and Building Poems from Royal Fireworks Press, as well as Knock at a Star, by X.J. Kennedy and Dorothy M. Kennedy.  I also have a copy of Rose, Where Did You Get that Red? by Kenneth Koch, which must be out on loan (or is in another stack or on another shelf somewhere in this house that is full of what I like to call décor des livres when I'm not complaining about a house stuck in the "late grad school" period).  I give all four my highest recommendation for teaching kids from about grades 3-8.  

Some favorite anthologies include Helen Ferris's Favorite Poems Old and New and A Journey through Time in Verse and Rhyme, edited by Heather Thomas.  We've begun many a fine day of learning at home with poems from these two books.

No children's book collection is complete without at least some Shel Silverstein!  That copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends is my own well-loved copy from thirty-some years ago.  And another childhood favorite of mine that I bought just after Jazz was born is The World of Christopher Robin, which has both A.A. Milne volumes of poetry: When We Were Very Young, and Now We Are Six. 

My eldest child knows me very well, and his thoughtful gift last Mother's Day was Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems, edited by Stephen Addiss.  Highly recommended.

Children's book illustrator Susan Jeffers has illustrated at least a couple of books based on famous poems, including Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost, and Hiawatha, by Henry Longfellow.  Her fairy tales are not to be missed, too!

For more picture books, try Jane Yolen's Ring of Earth (a gorgeous book of poetry about the seasons) and Caroline Kennedy's collection, A Family of Poems.  Missing from the photo above are two of our very favorite poetry books, which are off the shelf because they've been in use quite a bit this month: Talking Like the Rain (short poems for young children illustrated by Jane Dyer), Poetry by Heart, edited by Liz Attenborough.  We also like the Poetry for Young People series, which has over twenty titles which are still in print and widely available.

Book Sharing Monday is hosted by Canadian Home Learning.  Hop on over and join the fun!

Book Sharing Monday - Talking to the Sun

Talking to the Sun, an Illustrated Anthology of Poems for Young People, selected and introduced by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell, with art from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

First published in 1985, this book has been around for a while, and it's one that we've checked out of the library several times.  When I saw it on a used curriculum post a couple of weeks ago, I jumped at the chance of having our own copy, and am really enjoying using it as part of the stealth-homeschooling practice known as coffee-table strewing.  It's a lovely, lovely book filled with poetry from the classics through the modern age, and the art, oh, the art!  Makes me want to run to the nearest art museum and feast my eyes.

Book Sharing Monday is hosted by Serendipity Home School.  See what other beautiful books are being blogged about today!

Thanksgiving Poems for kids

Acting upon a suggestion from a founding member of my oldest child's poetry club, my ten-year-old son will be memorizing a poem about Thanksgiving to recite at this month's poetry club meeting. I'm thinking that my seven-year-old and even my almost-four-year-old may want to join in on the fun here at home, at least, so to that end, I've been ILL-ing many books with holiday poetry in them. In case anyone else is searching for something similar, here's the list as it stands right now. Let me know if you have any suitable titles to recommend, and I'll add them to the list, as well.

The Circle of Thanks: Native American Poems and Songs of Thanksgiving, told by Joseph Bruchac; illustrated by Murv Jacob.

Thanksgiving Poems, collected by Myra Cohn Livingston; illustrated by Stephen Gammell

Merrily Comes Our Harvest in, edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins; illustrated by Ben Shecter

Holiday Stew with Seasoning, Too! A Kid's Portion of Holiday and Seasonal Poems, by Jenny Whitehead

The Book of Thanksgiving--Stories, Poems, and Recipes for Sharing One of America's Greatest Holidays, by Jessica Faust and Jacky Sach

It's Thanksgiving! by Jack Prelutsky; illustrated by Marilyn Hafner

Over the River and through the Wood, by Lydia Marie Child; illustrated by David Catrow (in this particular incarnation, anyway)

Thanksgiving with Me, by Margaret Willy; illustrated by Lloyd Bloom

The poetry of L.M. Montgomery

Lucy Maud Montgomery is best known for her works of fiction, including Anne of Green Gables and its sequels. Scattered throughout her novels are poems, often "created" by the characters in her books. Recently I found a pdf of all of Montgomery's poems, including some I don't remember from the stories I've read. I enjoy the way she evokes images, such as in "Autumn Evening," which you can find here, in my entry in today's Poetry Friday round-up.

Ballads

My older son (age 10) is part of a poetry group whose similarly-aged members meet monthly and recite for one another. Recently, another mom and I have started taking turns talking to the kids about a form in poetry when recitations are finished. Having had an excellent introduction to haiku last month, the kids learned about the ballad at this month's meeting. Since I have a bit of a musical bent, anyway, this seemed to me like a good style into which to delve.

While learning that a ballad, simply put, is a poem that tells a story and is or was meant to be sung, I was fascinated to learn that one of the oldest existing printed ballads is about that heroic figure, Robin Hood. Printed around the late 1400's or early 1500's, "A Gest of Robyn Hode" is almost certainly a compilation of earlier versions of the legends that existed in the oral tradition.

I began, however, with a recording of the song, "The Grey Selkie," as sung by the band Solas on their Words that Remain cd, and then gave the kids a simple definition of the ballad. After this, I mentioned the titles of several ballads I knew the kids knew (as they had all sung at least two or three of them in the recent past). The list of traditional ballads is long, but these were the ones I mentioned--

Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier
Oh, Shenandoah
The Rising of the Moon
Greensleeves
The Highwayman
Tam Lin
Barbara Allen
A Gest of Robyn Hode

One of the children read a few stanzas from "Robyn Hode," and from there we began to talk about rhyme schemes. The kids were all given a copy of "The Great Selkie of Skule Skerry" from the Evan-Moor book, Read and Understand Poetry (Grades 5-6+) to figure out what rhyme scheme this particular poem follows (AABB). Then I read a bit from "The Highwayman" and "Casey at the Bat" and had them find the rhymes. From here we went on to discuss other common aspects of ballads, including

regular rhyme schemes (often AABB or ABAB)
regular rhythm
refrains
unanswered questions
unhappy and sometimes abrupt endings
dialogue between characters
sparsity of narration
in medias res form of storytelling (pronounced ĭn mē'dē-əs rās, as I found out afterwards with the help of a trusty dictionary)

I left the kids with a challenge to find a news story with which to use their imaginations and the facts to create a story featuring two individuals. They will also need to invent some dialogue between the characters, and use the story and dialogue as the basis for a ballad, relying on the possible components of that form listed above to help them. After creating their ballads, they will hopefully bring them to next month's meeting and share them. Since I challenged them, I suppose this means I should work on one of my own, hmm? Stay tuned. . .