It's Monday Plus Poetry Month - A New Challenge!

Visit Jen and Kellee at Teach Mentor Texts for this meme where you can find oh so many ideas for children's book (YA too!), and Sheila at Book Journeys for even more.

          Because I’m challenging myself to write a poem each day in April, I am writing a poem about the books I read this past week, this time in preparation for a non-fiction poetry lesson I’m giving soon.  Here is the poem, and a bit more about the books with some parts of poems from each book.  These are all books from our school library.  I know there are many more wonderful non-fiction anthologies and hope to find some at my local library too.  My goal was to find a variety of topics so that students could feel free to access something from their personal research topic that we do at my school, or have choice of any other topic they love.

       For the poem, I began listing the titles of the poetry anthologies and added a word here and there.

                       Um-m-Poetry

It’s Monday, So, you want to know what I’ve been Reading?

Eureka!  spans history with stories in poems about inventors and

Math Talk offers mathematical ideas for two voices. Add in

an imaginary walk out of doors with

Color Me A Rhyme-nature poems for young people and then I

rush to a Seawatch.

I ramble through jungles and deserts, down creeks, into forests

in The Beauty of the Beast poems from

the animal kingdom.  I look further at tiny creatures

seeing insects flourish in

Insectlopedia

They’re a bit less noisy than Click, Rumble, Roar,

Poems about Machines.

The titles give hints, but the poems

entrance.  Just open them up,

for poetic delight.

That’s what I’ve been doing

for students. 

The Beauty of The Beast   Poems from the Animal Kingdom selected by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Meilo So

     The section titles are poetic themselves, with titles like Jubilant, We Swim (fish) and Hollow-Boned Singers (birds).There are clever poems all through, but my favorite is in the section titled Wrapped In Coats of Fur, one titled About Muskrat, Let’s Say…   by Isabel Joshlin Glaser

       Here is the beginning:  “You stroll along the stream

                                             To where green rushes rise

                                             And you stop beneath the willow

                                             And there, to your surprise,

                                                            A dome lies on the water,

                                              Thatched of twigs and limbs and mud.

                                              That’s the roof of Muskrat’s home.

Insectlopedia, poems and paintings by Douglas Florian

Here’s part of The Daddy Longlegs

“O Daddy

Daddy O

How’d you get

Those legs to grow

So very long

And lean in size?

Color Me A Rhyme Nature Poems for Young People by Jane Yolen with photographs by Jason Stemple

       Beautiful photos of numerous places, all color pages, like the Orange page I like.  The poem is Orange, and begins I want to take a bite out of that sunset sky.   The photo is of that amazing orange lichen on a large rock.

Eureka!  Poems about inventors  by Joyce Sidman illustrated by K. Bennett Chavez

    Be sure to find the one about inventing the chocolate bar.  The book spans history from the discovery of clay, to French balloonists, Velcro and the World Wide Web.  I adored the stories.

              Food of The Gods

In the time before memory

Quetzalcoatl—the Plumed Serpent—

dropped ripe yellow pods of cacao

into the steamy jungle.

Sea Watch poems by Jane Yolen  illustrated by Ted Lewin

See Father Seahorse

His belly pouch,

Like a Snuggli of skin,

Enfolds the eggs

Math Talk  mathematical ideas in poems for two voices  poems by theoni pappas

         This book includes lots of topics; here is the beginning of One

One

I was the first of them

The Numbers That Is                                                            The numbers that is

I was

                                                                                    The initiator.

Click, Rumble, Roar:  Poems about Machines by Lee Bennett Hopkins           

     This is the cutest book, probably for younger students.

Garbage Truck by Marci Ridlon

Hungry monster,

You grumble, wheeze,

Never seem full.

NEXT:  A friend loaned me The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine so I’ll start that, and hopefully return to more reading now that I have fewer blogs to read, although it was a total pleasure!  I still need to finish Throwing Shadows by E.L. Konigsburg.