It's Monday - Read, Read, Read!

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








Writing a poem every day in April and meeting the Monday reading meme expectations of telling what I've been reading each week & plans for the future has been rather a challenge itself.  I don't want to write small rhyming poems about each book, but do want to find a creative way to share the books as well as write a poem.  During the last week, someone wrote about the structure of a Cento, & I knew that I had to try this from the books I've read.  I have looked and cannot find the one blogger I read that told me about this first.  Please accept my apologies.  A Cento is an original poem made using lines from the works of various poets.

              A Cento is sometimes called “patchwork poetry,” and the term cento actually comes from the Latin word for patchwork.  As a quilt is pieced together from patches of fabric, the cento poem is put together with lines from other sources.  Each line should be taken from a different source and must make sense.  It doesn’t have to rhyme, but is a big accomplishment if it does.  The poet’s name and poem title should be acknowledged with the line.

          My Cento-Books This Past Week

(1) But the truth is, the world is much more like an algebraic equation.   With variables and with changes, complicated and messy.

 (2) Years blend together

as ever again, the dream begins.

(3) Children, large and small, run wildly about, screaming, laughing, falling down. climbing up, jumping, dancing.  


(4) The restless fluttering goes on all night.


(5) Sometimes someone says in a real loud voice, "Hello, World!  What have you got for us today?"

      Nobody ever answers, but we don't care.

(1) The Lions of Little Rock Kristen Levine - Strong female protagonist, finding her voice in the racist time the year after the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Great realistic family interactions.
(2) poem Winged Words (about Johann Gutenberg) Eureka! Poems About Inventors, Joyce Sidman and K. Bennett Chavez- Fantastic information and poetry about inventors from the discovery of clay to the invention of the Internet.
(3) story-Retired  Every Living Thing - Cynthia Rylant - brief stories about one particular moment when someone's life is changed because of an animal.  - Use as mentor text for fiction based on fact.
(4) Tree of Life, The World of the African Baobab - Barbara Bash - beautifully illustrated book that tells the animal relationships to the baobab tree, from its birth to death - terrific  example of non-fiction research in a picture book.
(5) The Hello Goodbye Window - Norton Juster and Chris Raschka - I'll give a longer review later, won the Caldecott medal for 2005.  Incredibly sweet story about the relationship between a grandchild & his grandparents, & a window that is special in the grandparents' house.


Next: (6) The Snow Chlld, Iowyn Ivey - so far, good.  The "magic" is starting!  And looking for short stories for a group of third/fourth graders.

     Also - check on the Poetry Tag Group shown at the right!  And find Jama Rattigan's blog post at Jama's Alphabet Soup  to discover so many Poetry sites in the kidlitosphere doing wonderful things!  Cathy, at Merely Day By Day, is joining Mary Lee, at A Year of Reading in a poem a day this month. Other daily poem writers include Amy at The Poem Farm, and Donna at Mainely Write.  Plus Greg Pincus of Gotta Book has just published his first E-book, The Late Bird.  Now he's celebrating by giving one, or more, away.  See the blog that tells all about it  here