Finding Poems in Moments of Surprise - And a Giveaway!

Mini Monster and Sarah

Photo by Amy LV

Students - Sometimes as I go through my day, I notice something curious. Yesterday, I looked at the couch and saw Mini and Sarah...sharing!  These two are not exactly pals, so it was a small ah-ha! moment for me, a bright moment of the afternoon.

Writing ideas are all around, and one place you can find one is in the small bits of life that surprise you. Yesterday I also saw a flock of robins swooping up from a sumac tree.  There's a poem in there just waiting...

And now...a Poetry Peek and a giveaway too...

Today I am very happy to share the latest from Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong...HERE WE GO!  This book, like YOU JUST WAIT is a POETRY FRIDAY POWER BOOK, meaning that it is an interactive book full of mentor poems, places for young writers to play with words, and pages for poetry writing.

Available through Pomelo Books

This collection is very timely, addressing concerns that face many of our friends and neighbors right now.  It is a warmly and whimsically illustrated volume focusing on social action and stepping up to make your own corner of the world a more loving place.  And it's just full of poems, one each by Naomi Shihab Nye, Carole Boston Weatherford, Joseph Bruchac, David Bowles, Ibtisam Barakat, Eileen Spinelli, David L. Harrison, Kate Coombs, Robyn Hood Black, Michelle Heidenrich Barnes, Renée M. LaTulippe, Margaret Simon, and 24 poems by Janet Wong, threading the 36 poems into a story in different voices.

Here is a poem that is staying with me, one that helps me remember who I hope to be in hard times, by Michelle Heidenrich Barnes.

I asked Janet Wong to share a thought about this HERE WE GO with us today.  She says:

This book shows how you go from having a spark of an idea to getting your community behind you, including the important step of thanking your supporters. The kids who read this book might want to start, as the kids in HERE WE GO do, with something simple like a food drive or walk-a-thon to raise money for the local food bank. Fighting hunger is something that anyone in any town can agree on, right? And any school district, too: because if your students don’t have healthy food, they can’t concentrate. Fighting hunger = better learning! 

You can read more about HERE WE GO at any of these cozy homes online:

Irene Latham's Live Your Poem

Laurie L. Birchall's Poetry for Teaching

Mary Lee Hahn's A Reading Year 

Sylvia Vardell’s Poetry for Children 

Michelle Heidenrich Barnes's Today's Little Ditty

Linda Kulp Trout's Write Time

Katie's The Logonauts

Janet and Sylvia have generously offered to send 5 copies of HERE WE GO to one winner, someone who comments on this blog post by next Thursday evening, February 23. If you win, please give the books to a group: book club group, or home school group, or other group of students who will enjoy reading and writing on its pages.

Jone is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at Check it Out.  Head over there for poems, ideas, and community.  We are a welcoming community....and we welcome you!

Please share a comment below if you wish.

If you are under 13 years old, please comment only with a parent 

or as part of a group with your teacher and class.

Everynight Everywhere - MyPoWriYe #203

Thank you to Tricia over at The Miss Rumphius Effect for another Monday Poetry Stretch, this week about the moon.  This is poem #4 of Free Verse Week II, continuing through Friday.

Where do poems come from?  I don't know.  Each one waits around, I think, like a bit of beach glass, hoping that someone will grab it.  Sometimes a poem is not ready yet, and we throw it back to the sea until it is smoother, ready to be written down.  

But if we throw a poem back, it is possible that someone else may find it and write it one day.  This is much like a purchase we do not make but someone else does.  When we return, we may be surprised - see my friend Emily's poem for one such book-story-poem at Tea and Krempets.

Students - today's poem idea is one that I've picked up on the beach over and over again.   For years, looking up at the moon's full face, I have thought, "Wow.  That looks like a pocket watch."  Finally, today, this image found its poem.   Keep this in mind as you live...any passing thought or line might be a part of your writing someday.

The rest of today's poem comes from several places.  Many children speak the word "moon" as a very first word.  I remember this from my own children, nieces and nephews, and our friends' children.  Children all over the world speak this first word as they point up at their skies.  "Moon."

I have been thinking about children from different places in the world because we have a beautiful niece from Thailand and an adorable nephew coming soon from Ethiopia.  These children are in our families and still somehow always linked to their birthlands.

Soon our family will be learning from a few other families in our area who have been working to support an orphanage in Kenya, the Crossroads Springs Institute.   Each of us is connected to so many across the world in ways we do not yet know.  Who might you meet one day?  Who have you already met who will touch your life a bit further down the path?

Several years ago, I read a poem by Margaret Tsuda in LASTING IMPRESSIONS, a classic and wonderful professional book by Shelley Harwayne.  This poem,  "Commitment in a City", speaks to our connectedness with others, whether we know them our not.

 Heinemann

We will have a full moon here this Poetry Friday! 

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