New Year-New Reading

            Poetry Friday is hosted today by Betsy at her wonderful new poetry site, I Think In Poems.  Thanks to Betsy, we'll be sharing our thoughts today, one of the last days before our students arrive.  

Flickr Creative Commons photo by Frank Douwes on Wikimedia Commons

            Back in April for Poetry Month, Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading began sharing photos from Wikimedia Commons, offering some lessons in respecting artists' property rights and property infringement, along with writing poems each day in response to the photo or other media.  I was hooked by the photos and sounds she shared, and with Mary Lee as a terrific mentor, I found I could write "something" most of the time and share in the comments.  There are a few poems I kept, but the images seem to have faded away, except for this one.  

             Here at the beginning of school as we talk about our reading goals and plans for students, and I observe the boxes of new books in the library, and many more in classrooms, I remember this photo, wondering how many children around the world wait for a book, and consider that a book, any book, is a treasure.  I think I will share this with students, and we will wonder together about this child in Tanzania reading a book! A former student has started a school in Kenya for girls, and has told me that many of the youngest students' "work" was combing the trash dumps for anything to sell at market. Perhaps we will explore ways to help others obtain books to love?

Here is what I wrote in April:

Gold-digging

It’s market day.

I needed to find

a treasure to sell,

a piece of metal,

a toy to mend.

Instead I found

my own kind of gold,

and sat down

right then

to look.

                                                                   Linda Baie ©All Rights Reserved