It's Monday - Celebrating - Preparing for Poetry Month - Almost April

     Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and 

  

Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they and others have been reading! Your TBR lists will grow! Happy Reading! 

       

       April arrives in a few days and that feels like a special month for several reasons, one of which is that it is known as Poetry Month. For that reason, I have a second post for #IMWAYR today, to share some of the recent poetry books out this year! I know many beloved books of poetry for children, teens, and adults yet I wanted to share these new ones in case you have not met them yet!

        I cannot imagine NOT having this marvelous new book by Nikki Grimes on my bookshelf or in my classroom, or as a gift for someone. She has researched and found poems from women poets from the Harlem Renaissance, shared the poem, and her chosen "strike line" to use in her own poem. The "strike line", FYI, is the line where each word ends a line in a poem form termed a "Golden Shovel" originated by Terrance Hayes. Nikki used this form to write two previous books, One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance and the picture book The Watcher, illustrated by Bryan Collier.

        This book is divided into three sections with the themes of Heritage, Earth Mother, and Taking Notice. An exceptional addition is that each two-poem part is illustrated by a different artist. I marked a few favorites. The first is "Joy" by Clarissa Scott Delany, celebrating that emotion "like the roistering wind/That laughs through stalwart pines." Nikki uses another line from this poem and writes of  "Leah's Reunion" when "Without this maternal crew's guidance, a/brown girl like me would simply be adrift." I adored the celebration in "Rondeau" by Jessie Redmon Fauset and Nikki's "Tara Takes on Montclair" where she writes of a girl who cannot understand why "folks want me to see "the countryside" and where that girl discovers trees and cousins suggest "Let's head for the woods!" 

        There are more and more poems to love and extensive resources that include a table of contents, a preface, pages about the poem form, and the Harlem Renaissance. Found at the back are poet biographies, artist biographies, acknowledgments, sources, and an index. I loved every page.

              This past pandemic year has been stressful for many, but most especially for children, switching back and forth from in-school to hybrid school to online school. I imagine everyone knows of this mixed-up world that children have been asked to navigate. 

               Poet and educator Georgia Heard has published a wonderful book of creative poetry, all centered on mindfulness, helping to find calm in the midst of what she describes in one poem, "There is a Monkey in My Mind". On a double-page spread showing a monkey jumping around using vines on trees, illustrated by Isabel Roxas, a few of the lines read "I tell myself: Be kind to the monkey swinging in my mind, and give it space–". It's one of the poems describing the challenges that comes when distracted, sometimes not even realizing that a lesson has been missed, a question has not been answered. Finding ways to be mindful becomes Georgia's thread of helpful poems, with titles like "Counting Breaths", the title poem, "My Thoughts are Clouds", and about meditation, "Come Home to Your True Self". You may want this book for yourself to enjoy the poetry and the ways Georgia suggests to become mindful. It offers a lovely way to present the ideas to children, in class or at home. In the end, putting her own creative spark, she changes to being "kindful" with a final and hopeful poem. This lovely book is a how-to with child-friendly illustrations and softly-worded poems.