Title: This Is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness
Author: Joyce Sidman
Illustrator: Pamela Zagarenski
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Genre: Childrens’ poetry, picture book
Age level: 11+
Themes: Apology/guilt, sympathy, free form poems, rhyme schemes, strengthening relationships between family & friends
Synopsis: It’s hard to say you’re sorry. But when Mrs. Merz asks her sixth grade class to write poems of apology, they end up liking their poems so much that they decide to put them together into a book. Not only that, but they get the people to whom they apologized to write poems back. They even ask one of their artistic classmates to illustrate the poems. In haiku, pantoums, two-part poems, snippets, and rhymes, Mrs. Merz’s class writes of crushes, deception, overbearing parents, loving and losing pets, and doge ball accidents. Some poets are deeply sorry; some not at all. Some are forgiven; some are not. But each pair of poems reveals a relationship, a connection- between sisters, brothers, father and son, teacher and student, and best friends. So…what sort of apology poem would you write?
Synopsis: It’s hard to say you’re sorry. But when Mrs. Merz asks her sixth grade class to write poems of apology, they end up liking their poems so much that they decide to put them together into a book. Not only that, but they get the people to whom they apologized to write poems back. They even ask one of their artistic classmates to illustrate the poems. In haiku, pantoums, two-part poems, snippets, and rhymes, Mrs. Merz’s class writes of crushes, deception, overbearing parents, loving and losing pets, and doge ball accidents. Some poets are deeply sorry; some not at all. Some are forgiven; some are not. But each pair of poems reveals a relationship, a connection- between sisters, brothers, father and son, teacher and student, and best friends. So…what sort of apology poem would you write?
About the author: Joyce Sidman, author of the Caldecott Honor book Song of the Waterboatman and Other Pond Poems as well as other fine books of poetry, often teaches poetry in her writing residencies. One year, she asked a group of fourth-graders to help her write a sorry poem to her mother. “At the suggestion of one of the children,” she writes, “I sent a revised version of the poem to her. She responded with a lovely letter about how she’d felt all those years ago- and, of course, forgiving me. This made me think a lot about apology and forgiveness. What if all these sorry poems were actually sent to the people they were written to? What if all those people wrote back? One day I sat down to write, and a group of students stepped forth from my imagination to utter their apologies one by one.” Joyce lives in Wayzata, Minnesota, with her husband, two sons, and dong named Watson, who at least looks sorry when he digs holes in the lawn.
About the illustrator: Pamela Zagarenski is a painter of many worlds. She creates sculptures and large paintings, which can be viewed at an art gallery in Mystic, Connecticut, and she illustrates picture books, including Mites to Mastodons by Maxine Kumin. About illustrating this book she writes: “I made sketches on the kinds of papers kids might have- anything from journal pages to notebook paper to paper bags, newspaper, graph paper, school supplies.” She was immediately drawn to the apology poems: “They reminded me of all the poems I should have written, all the words that I wish I had said but were left unsaid, and what can happen when we are honest.” She divides her time between Stonington, Connecticut, and her house on Prince Edward Island.
Pre-reading activities: Students will write their own letters of apologies for something they have done in the past or for something that is happening at that moment.
Post-reading activities: Discuss whether the poems of apology were really accepted by the recipients, give reasons why or why the apologies weren’t accepted. Then they will rewrite the response poems to truly forgive the person who was apologizing.
Reflection: When a person is trying to apologize to another person or something they felt they have done something wrong to, it is hard to find the right words. Putting their apology in poems allows the words to flow in a form that is theirs to decide. I really liked their poems of apology, and thought the idea of having the person the apology was written to wrote a poem back, usually accepting their apology or ways for that person to be better.
Works cited:
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