Monday Reading - New Poetry - Blog Tour

          Visit Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders to see what everyone is reading and sharing. 

     “If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun.” 
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

Margaret Simon, blogging at Reflections on The Teche, a poet friend I hope to meet someday, has recently published a poetry book that sings of her home in the Bayou Teche. It echoes the mantra of Richard Louv above, celebrating nature and inspiring everyone to get out there to see, feel, hear, taste and smell nature!

          I have a few friends who are prepping for a school start in a few weeks. Yes, it's nearly August and some schools begin earlier than can be imagined! This time, I am almost the final part of a blog tour for a marvelous new book that's just right for summer-into-autumn experiences, poetry beginnings, and being inspired by nature wherever one happens to live. Bayou Song: Creative Explorations of the South Louisiana Landscape offers adults and children, teachers and students a mentor text to wander through, learn of this new environment, then to sketch and craft personal poems from the ideas included.

         What's inside: 
Gorgeous illuminating photographs by Henry Cancienne

Margaret's introductions of different things in the Bayou like Spanish moss, eagles, great blue herons, and alligators, followed by her poems beautifully illustrated by Anna Cantrell. 

Double-page spreads with brief support, lined and blank ones for writing one's own poem and on the right side, room to sketch.

        

           If you have not previously considered nature writing and sketching before with your students, this is a book that will help you begin. Whether by yourself or with your students, you will discover your ability to notice and create new ideas and comparisons when recording observations, then sketching and writing opens new pleasures in your lives. 

          On one page, Margaret writes a “White Ibis Triptych” which she shares is a work of art in three parts. Her direction says: “Think about three ways an animal moves. Write three lines in three stanzas to create your own triptych.”  

Here is my “try” from a bird I often observe here in Colorado.

click to enlarge

        In my years of teaching, my students and I spent hours in the field observing and recording, writing nature notes, prose and poetry. I wish that I had had Margaret's book during my teaching time. It would have been a joy to use!

         Here is the list of the blog tour hosts if you'd like to read earlier ones, or the final one by Dani Burtsfield:

Friday, June 22: Michelle Kogan
Tuesday, June 28: Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core

Friday, June 29: Ruth Hersey at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town

Friday,  July 6: Kimberly Hutmacher at Kimberly Hutmacher Writes

Friday, July 13: Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise

Tuesday, July 17: Laura Shovan

Tuesday, July 24: Amanda Potts at Persistence and Pedagogy

Friday, July 27: Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink

Monday, July 30 Linda Baie at  Teacher Dance

Friday, Aug. 3 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work that Matters 

          Thanks Margaret for the pleasure of reading and reviewing your book! Best wishes for its landing in the hands of many!