Wednesday, April 30, 2014

April 30th....last day of International Poetry Month...goodbye


Hi everyone.  Yes, sadly it is the last day of Poetry Month and I am going to give you a smorgasborg of poetry fun.  First though let me give you the answer to yesterday's book quote.  The excerpt came from the book,  "Amelia Bedelia Chapter Book #2: Amedlia Bedelia Unleashed. " by Herman Parish.

Today's quote is:


                                                      "My dad and I live in an airport."




Here are two poems that will get your smiling ....

Books and Me
by
Pat Mora

We belong
together,
books and me,
like toast and jelly
o queso y tortillas.
Delicious! ¡Delicioso!

Like flowers and bees,
birds and trees,
books and me.

©2009 Pat Mora. All rights reserved.



Walking
by 
Walter Dean Myers

How come my feet know how to meet
The sidewalk as I walk?
          “Because of your brain, my love.”
How come my lips don’t ever slip
As I begin to talk?
          “Your lovely brain, my pet”
How come my knees fly through the breeze
As I race along?
          “Did I mention your B-R-A-I-N?”
How come my ears know what to hear
When I listen to a song?
          “They’re connected to your brain!”
How come my eyes can judge the size
Of everything they see?
          “Your brain, dummy!”
How come my wrists know how to twist
A knob or turn a key?
          “BRAIN! BRAIN! BRAIN! Use it!”
And how come my belly button just sits there in the middle of my stomach without doing one little bit of work, gets these little lint things in it, and feels funny if I touch it?

          “Err…beats me.”

© Walter Dean Myers. All rights reserved.


Featured book of the day:




Title:  Love That Dog
Author: Sharon Creech


About the author:






  • Sharon Creech is the Newbery-Medal winning author of Walk Two Moons, and the Newbery Honor winning author of The Wanderer. Her other works include Bloomability, Absolutely Normal Chaos, Chasing Redbird, Pleasing the Ghost, Love That Dog, and Ruby Holler.
    In Her Own Words:
    Many readers ask me where I get my ideas. This is probably the hardest question to answer, because a book contains hundreds, maybe thousands, of ideas, squirming and changing and evolving as I write. I don't know the story before I begin. I only have a vague image in my mind of a character and a place. Then I write in order to find out what the story is. I want to know why the character is in this place and what is happening now, what happened before, and what will happen later.
    Sometimes people and events in my “real life” spark ideas for stories. In Absolutely Normal Chaos for example, Mary Lou's family is very much like my own family. Like Mary Lou, I have a sister and three brothers (my brothers' names are the same as those in the book), and when I was Mary Lou's age, my cousin came to live with us, but none of the things that happen to Mary Lou's cousin happened to my own cousin. In Walk Two Moons, the trip that Salamanca takes with Gram and Gramps follows the same route that I took with my family when I was Sal's age, but we weren't searching for my mother (she was in the car with us) and we didn't face the danger and difficulties that Salamanca does.
    The fictional town of Bybanks appears in many of my stories. Bybanks is based on the real town of Quincy, Kentucky, where my cousins live on a farm, and where I spent many wild days as a child, running through the hills. Other real-life sparks include: My father, Arvel, was the inspiration for Uncle Arvie in Pleasing the Ghost, and the two years that I lived in Switzerland sparked some of the ideas in Bloomability. A trip that my daughter took, sailing across the Atlantic when she graduated from college, inspired The Wanderer.
    I am also often asked if I am going to write sequels. Most of my books are already related to each other, though not exactly sequels. You will find familiar characters and places popping up all over. I suspect that this will continue to happen in future books, because each book I finish seems to leave threads with me that I want to pick up again when I start a new story.
    I love to hear about my readers' families and interests, and many readers ask about my family and my interests. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and later lived in Washington, D.C., and later still spent twenty years in England and Switzerland. My two children (a son and a daughter) are now grown and living in the U.S. and my husband and I have also returned to the U.S. We live at the Pennington School, where my husband is the headmaster, in New Jersey. We have no pets because we travel so much. Some things I enjoy doing are reading, kayaking, swimming, and cross-country skiing. When I was young, my two favorite things to do were to climb trees and ride my bike.
    I hope you take many “walks” with many characters and that you will enjoy the worlds they take you to.


  • A bit about the book:
    This book is written in free verse in a diary format.  It is presented from a young boy's view who resists poetry assignments from his teacher.  His name is Jack and he hates poetry because he thinks it is for girls and his brain feels empty. His wise teacher Ms. Stretchberry doesn't give up and just keeps handing out poetry assignments to her class.  Jack has to respond because assignments are mandatory, and then a beautiful thing happens.  The more he write poems the more he realizes that maybe they are not so bad after all.  Constantly writing he discovers he does have something to say and when his words are all typed up on yellow paper....man, they look mighty fine indeed and he feels very, very proud of himself and exuberantly happy.  
    Written with heart, Sharon Creech inspires through Jack that you can find your voice, you can unleash new creative ideas and skills that are buried deep inside of you and best of all you can have great fun doing it.  Yes you can..... before you say you can't .... at least give it a try before you give it up.





                                                          Book Review Rating:  8 (Fantastic!)

    Read on and read always!  Have a great day.  

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