Monday Reading - Carrying On

              Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they've been reading, along with others who post their favorites.  Your TBR lists will grow! Happy Reading!
          Share with the hashtag #IMWAYR

        Thinking of all of you during this challenging time, hope you are doing well and finding joy in your lives every day. This continuing challenge is so hard for everyone. I'm trying to help where I can by supporting those who are virtually closed, still offering carry-out, etc. 

             This is the final Monday post in April, poetry month. Although I've written a post every day for a poetry challenge, I have not shared any poetry books. There are so many I love and you can find many on this new list from NCTE, the 2020 notable poetry list from the School Library Journal.

             Today, I'm sharing a brand new book from Amy Ludwig VanDerwater and an older book from Kate Coombs. 

           Amy's book, Read! Read! Read!, came out a few years ago. I returned to read it again after reading this brand new one, all about writing. Some people narrow the definitions of 'reading' or 'writing', looking at these processes as single acts, but not Amy. Luckily for readers of all ages, and especially now that teachers and students are doing their studies screen to screen, Amy has written a book full of poems that feel like a basket of fruit, all different, but yes, all fruit (writing). 

          The poem before the title page becomes the invitation to take the alphabet, "a puzzle –/full of mystery/full of glory", to mix "endless worlds/from 26". Through every page, the writing process lives in Amy's metaphors. You can discover building blocks in "Timeline" where "Writing a sentence/is building a tower"; and gardening in "Anything Can Grow" that tells "When I plant a writing seed/anything can grow".  Clever choices from start to finish take every reader on the journey in writing from that opening alphabet, through creating ideas to having patience to the final celebration of a pen, "And when he reads, the boy can see/the pen has set his stories free." 

            For all the teachers creating online lessons for this next and final month of the year, this book to share will remind students of the joy of the writing process, poem by poem, all the days through to a celebrated final product. The imaginative final poem, "Truth", leaves an invitation for everyone to open a door: "Everything has a door./We write our way in./We do./Each word is a key./It is." 

          With pages full of a diversity of children, and occasionally animals and adults, Ryan O' Rourke makes magic in his illustrations with Amy's poems. There are those building blocks of words, a tree filled from which to choose "Ideas (like Peaches"), and a fabulous double-page spread of an octopus, a notebook and pencil for each tentacle! That poem and page itself inspires a writing time for "If I were. . ." Thanks to Amy and Ryan for a new writing book that will be a joy to have in every classroom!

        I read and reviewed this book when it came out a few years ago. Now I've read several articles about the stress and anxiety in children with their online way of doing school and I want to remind everyone about this wonderfully lovely book of mindful ways to "BE". Although teachers can no longer take their students out into the world, they can share these words with them to encourage students to get outside, perhaps even in imagination: "I see myself/by the ocean, toes touching sand,/fingers finding a shell/at the edge of blue water./Where is your quiet place?" My review is here!

           I believe I just found my favorite book of the year. It's wordless, filled with so beautiful a story you will want to look and look, then start all over again. The multi-page intro before the title page starts the journey. Don't miss Henry Cole's note at the end. I'm just sad that everyone is not at their schools now. You will know what I mean when you read this story. Enjoy, savor, and get this book before the next school year!

What I'm Reading: I haven't finished either of these, but am enjoying them: an ARC from Candleswick Press/Walker Books titled Nevertell by Katharine Orton and one from my #MustReadin2020 list, Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy - The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters.