Silly Street- Poetry

Title: Silly Street

Author: Jeff Foxworthy

Illustrator: Steve Bjorkman

Publisher: HarperCollins

Genre: Childrens’ poetry, picture book

Age level: 5-8

Themes: Silliness, childrens' fantasies, rhyme schemes
Synopsis: There’s a flying squirrel circus, pink elephant races, and even a pony that eats fried baloney. At the candy book you can buy gummy yum noodles and rainbow jaw busters. At the hat store you can purchase a helmet, a tiara, or a halo- if you happen to be an angel. From the comedic mind of Jeff Foxworthy, author of the bestselling Dirt On My Shirt, comes another hilarious collection of poems. Kids will have so much fun reading these poems, they’ll wish they actually lived on Silly Street.

About the author: Jeff Foxworthy is one of the most respected and successful comedians in the country. He is the largest-selling comedy-recording artist in history, a multiple Grammy Award nominee, and bestselling author of more than twenty-three books, including the New York Times bestselling Dirt On My Shirt. He hosts the hit television show Are You Smarter Than a 5^th Grader? And his syndicated weekly radio show, The Foxworthy Countdown, is carried in more than 220 markets across the United States.

About the illustrator: Steve Bjorkman has illustrated more than seventy books for children, including Dirt On My Shirt by Jeff Foxworthy; Emily’s Everyday Manners by Peggy Post and Cindy Post Senning; I Hate English! by Ellen Levine; and Safari Park by Stuart J. Murphy. He also creates greeting cards with his brother, Carl, and together they have sold millions through Recycled Paper Greetings. Steve lives with his wife and three children in Irvine, California.

Pre-reading activities: From looking at the picture and the title, the students will close their eyes and imagine what they think it is like on Silly Street and what types of animals and objects they will encounter.

Post-reading activities: Students will be given their own poem from the book (students will be given two poems if they are shorter). The students will read the poem, and write down the shop or place mentioned in the poem(s) as well as some things to do there. Then they will write 3-4 sentences discussing if they would like to visit that place, why or why not, and some things they could also do at that place.

Reflection: This book allows children to dive into their fantasies, going into a never-ending candy store, mile-high ice cream cones, and a sand box as big as a city block. Silly Street allows the reader to be just that, silly, on a street of locations they could only dream of. When I was reading these poems, I was thinking back to my childhood and the things I would have loved to encounter, and children will feel the same way as they read this book.
Works cited:
Barnes & Noble
Silly Street picture

Good Sports- Poetry

Title: Good Sports: Rhymes about Running, Jumping, Throwing, and more

Author: Jack Prelutsky

Illustrator: Chris Raschka

Publisher: Random House Children’s books

Genre: Childrens’ poetry, picture book

Age level: 10+

Themes: Rhyme schemes, sports/physical activities, good sportsmanship, praise, determination, losing graciously

Synopsis: If you like running, jumping, throwing, and having fun playing games, then this book is meant for you! Jack Prelutsky celebrates the joy of participating in sports boys and girls play. Whether it’s baseball or soccer, gymnastics or karate, winning or losing, excellent or just being a happy klutz, these short rhymes sing out in praise of winter games, summer games, and all-year-round games. The streamlined illustrations of 2006 Caldecott Medal winner Chris Raschka zip across the page, capturing the motions and the emotions of the kids who play them.

About the author: Jack Prelutsky grew up in the Bronx near Yankee Stadium and has always considered baseball his favorite sport. Long considered the unofficial post laureate of elementary school kids, he was officially named the nation’s first Children’s Poet Laureate in 2006. He has written more than forty popular, award-winning books of verse, ranging from The New Kid on the Block to What a Day It Was at School!, and has compiled eleven poetry anthologies, including The Random House Book of Poetry for Children and The Beauty of the Beast. Jack and his wife now live in Seattle.

About the illustrator: Chris Raschka played soccer in school and still does, along with basketball. He has illustrated many books, including the 2006 Caldecott Medal winner The Hello, Goodbye Window, and has written and illustrated the Caldecott Honor Book Yo! Yes?, Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, and Five for a Little One. He lives with his wife and young son on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Pre-reading activities: Students will name some of the sports they have seen, such as football, baseball, basketball. They can give some reasons why people like to play sports (because they’re fun, something to do, something to try if you’re not used to it) and why they think most sports are played on teams.  

Post-reading activities: A survey will be taken of the students’ favorite sports to play or sports they have played when they were younger. The students will write their own poems about their favorite sport, talking about a time when they have been part of a big win or even a big loss. They will also illustrate their poems, using as much or as little detail as they would like since the pictures in the book are very simple.

Reflection: Going through the book as a book walk, the students could easily figure out the sports the poems are written about with the pictures being very simple and colorful. I liked how the poems cover all aspects of sports; winning and how it feels to score the winning basket in the basketball game or score the final touchdown in the big football game, but it also talks about just coming up short and how to accept defeat. I think that kids of all ages would like these poems from the pictures to the words used in the poems, and the mental images they would get as they read the poems.

Works cited:

Barnes & Noble 

Good Sports picture 

This Is Just to Say- Poetry

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?

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:

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble 

This Is Just to Say picture 

Think Again- Poetry

Title: Think Again

Author: JonArno Lawson

Illustrator: Julie Morstad

Publisher: Kids Can Press Ltd

Genre: Childrens’ poetry

Age level: 12+

Themes: Exploring deeper thinking, hidden meanings, rhyme schemes
Synopsis: This collection of quietly beautiful and surprisingly humorous short poems reveals first love’s uncertainties, frustrations and joys. Whether describing two people meeting or the misunderstandings and revelations that follow, these poems and the evocative illustrations that accompany them will give readers every reason to think…and think again.

About the author: JonArno Lawson lives in Toronto, Canada, with his wife and three children. He is the author of several books of poetry for children and adults and is a two-time winner of the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry.

About the illustrator: Julie Morstad has illustrated a number of award-winning picture books. She lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Pre-reading activities: Each poem contains 4 lines, called a stanza. Introduce poetry to students by saying that not every poem needs to rhyme, as many of the poems in this book don’t. Poems can be written quite easily, usually depending on what the writer is thinking or feeling at the time. Have each student write their own 4 line poems with about 7-10 words per line on what they are feeling at that moment.

Post-reading activities: Since each poem is written to make the students think and reflect, they will choose two of their favorite poems and work with a partner to try to figure out what it means. Each poem’s title will be placed on the board and the students will take turns writing the meanings on the board.

Reflection: These poems are written in a very simple form- 4 lines each, 7-10 words per line. Some rhyme; some don't. I thought that although they were written very simply and the accompanying pictures are simple as well, the poems themselves allow the reader to think deeply as there is no right answer; it's all how the reader interprets it. Each poem was a quick read and it seemed they were all composed based on the writer's thoughts and feelings, and that's how many of my poems were, so I found I could relate to some of the poems in the book.

Works cited:

Barnes & Noble

Think Again picture