Letters between friends

There’s a special feeling that you get when you hold the new book of an author whose work you've loved in the past. 

It’s a little like when you meet an old friend on the street and she shares good news with you, or maybe like when you return to a favorite spot and find it’s the same but different, still special but with a newness that wasn’t there before. 

That’s how I felt when I held my copy of Joyce Sidman’’s Dear Acorn (Love, Oak): Letter Poems to Friends by Joyce Sidman (Illustrated by Melissa Sweet). 

What a remarkable collection of letters in the form of poems that friends send to each other. 

The “friends,” however, are different than you might expect. 

Imagine an oak tree sending a letter to an acorn, or an acorn responding with a letter of its own. 

And what if a bubble could write a letter to sky?

Dear Sky,

Hello! It’s me, Bubble!

I’m here!

Someone breathed me

awake!

Or what if baby sea turtles could share a poem with the ocean, and the ocean could respond with a poem of its own to all the creatures who live in its water?

Not only is Dear Acorn a collection of love letters between friends, it’s a book where each poem and illustration connect us more deeply to each other and to the world around us, and encourage us to use our imaginations to envision the world in a way that makes it clear how all of life is interconnected. 

Melissa Sweet’s illustrations are perfect compliments to the poems and equally wonderful, bringing to life Sidman’s words and offering readers a world in these pages as colorful and enthralling as the world itself.

Here’s Oak writing to Acorn:

Dear Acorn,

I feel you there,

a tickle at my twig tips,

a plump promise

against my rough bark.

Your whole life ahead of you

and weeks till you fall.

Take a good look around, Acorn.

Drink in the view.

The next stop is earth.

Then years upon years

until you see this sky

this high

again.

I’ll be waiting,

Oak

And here’s Acorn’s response:

Dear Oak,

I am round and ready. Bursting

with hope, crammed with possibilities.

I know I must drop and sleep andrtificate

sprout and grow. So slow! But then,

Oak, I’ll stretch up my arms,

strong and true. I’ll be your

friend, the one who rises

up beside you.

Love,

Acorn

For budding poets (young and old), Sidman includes a handful of suggestions for how to write your own letter poems, such as how to choose a subject, what to think about, and how to begin writing a poem. 

I hope you’ll get the chance to pick up your own copy of Dear Acorn (Love, Oak): Letter Poems to Friends from a bookstore or library near you and enjoy Sidman’s poems and Sweet’s illustrations. 

It’s a marvelous collection that helps both adults and children see the world anew. 

Splashing with words

 “Lizards dancing with birds? No problem,” writes Newbery Honor Award poet Joyce Sidman in The Poetry Friday Anthology, edited by Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell. “The world is full of wonders … and your only job is to be able to see those wonders, to feel them, and to try to communicate them.”

Indeed, it’s the aim of this new collection of poems to help children--potential poets, perhaps--see and feel the wonders of the world through the magic of poetry, as well as inspire them to splash and play with words, communicating something of their own wonder of the world through poems.

Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, who have collaborated previously on three innovative poetry e-books (PoetryTagTime, P* Tag, and GiftTag), have brought together more than seventy poets and assembled over 200 poems in their newest anthology which was inspired by the weekly poetry postings that readers can find online every Friday (thanks to the efforts of Poetry Friday’s founder, Kelly Herold, who introduced the idea to the “kidlotosphere” in 2006). 

The Poetry Friday Anthology is an unusual collection in that, while it contains poems for children, it’s designed as a teaching tool to help teachers gain comfort and familiarity with poetry and to encourage them to share the poems in their classrooms. So, in addition to poems, readers will find helpful tips (Take5!) that accompany each poem and offer five different ways for readers to gain deeper insights into the poems.

Here’s an example of a poem included in the Poems for Kindergarten section: 

Petting Zoo

By Laura Purdie Salas

Bossy goats,
Floppy dogs,
Silky bunnies,
Bristly hogs.

Milk a cow,
Find a nest.
I like cuddling
Kittens best. 

And here are the tips that are offered to help teachers bring the poem to life in the imaginations of their students: 

Take 5! 

1. Before reading the poem, ask students to name animals they might encounter at a petting zoo. Share the poem emphasizing each animal name.

2. Read the poem aloud again and invite students to make the corresponding animals noises.

3. For discussion: What is your favorite animal from this poem? What kind of animals might be found in a nest?

4. Poets love to play with words. Sometimes they’ll use a word just because they like the sound of it (or the way a word makes a picture in your mind). Do the words bossy, floppy, silky, and bristly make a picture in your mind? Talk about those pictures together.

5. Share another poem about kittens with All Worn Out by Kristy Dempsey (2^nd Grade, Week 5). 

You’ll find some of your favorite poets in this collection, as well as some poets who you may never have met before—from Joy Acey, Arnold and Jamie Adoff, and Kathi Appelt to Allan Wolf, Janet Wong, and Jane Yolen, with Cynthia Cotten, Nikki Grimes, David L. Harrison, Juanita Havill, Esther Hershenhorn, J. Patrick Lewis, Linda Sue Park, Greg Pincus, Michael J. Rosen, Eileen Spinelli, Carole Boston Weatherford, and many more.

Here are a few more poems, just to give you a sense of the range and breadth that you’ll find here.

From the First Grade section: 

Kerchoo!

By Cynthia Cotten

Mary Kate began to sneeze.
She held her breath to make it stop.
The sneezes all piled up inside,
Until at last her head went “pop!” 

From the Fourth Grade section: 

Archeology of a Book

By Betsy Franco

Remove
my words.
Remove
my art.
My story
unravels
back
to the start.
Remove
my pages,
spine,
design.
What’s left?
An idea
in the author’s
mind. 

From the Fifth Grade section: 

When The Future Arrives

By Bobbi Katz

When the future arrives,
   breathless,
           immense,
it completely
takes over
the present tense. 

With poems like these and hundreds more, it’s easy to see how teachers might eagerly use this book to incorporate poetry into their lessons on a daily or weekly basis.

And it’s easy to see, too, why poets, both young and old, will delight in the collection’s playfulness and humor, as well as in the craftsmanship of the poems that can be found in this volume.

For more information about The Poetry Friday Anthology, visit:

http://poetryfridayanthology.blogspot.com

http://www.amazon.com/Poetry-Friday-Anthology-Common-Core/dp/1937057682

For more about Sylvia Vardell’s and Janet Wong’s poetry e-books, visit:

http://pomelobooks.com/Pomelo_Books/Home.html

http://www.amazon.com/PoetryTagTime-ebook/dp/B004ULVK1I/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1

And take a look at Sylvia’s blog on poetry, too:

http://poetryforchildren.blogspot.com

And check out Janet’s website, as well:

http://www.janetwong.com