Posts Tagged poetry

Book List: Just Right Poetry for Middle-Graders

By on April 3, 2019   /   Articles, Book Lists, For Parents, For Teachers, Nonfiction  

It’s National Poetry Month!  What better way to celebrate than to explore some of the great poetry books available for readers ages 8-12?  As you read poetry this month or anytime, remember that poets tune in to the sounds of feeling and the feelings of sound. Please READ  POEMS ALOUD to fully enjoy them.

Here are some appealing collections by single poets:

Marilyn Singer in Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reverso Poems, ingeniously turns familiar fairy tales like Snow White and Cinderella upside down in poems that you can  read forward and backward for opposite meanings! Her other books in reverso form are Follow Follow (featuring more tales like The Little Mermaid and The Tortoise and the Hare) and Echo Echo, based on Greek myths. All three are illustrated by Josee Masee.

Patrick Lewis’s Everything is a Poem: The Best of J. Patrick Lewis, Illustrated by Maria Cristina Pritelli, earns its title. It includes a range of poems written our third Children’s Poet Laureate. Subjects include animals, people, reading, sports (some of the best baseball poems I’ve read–take that, Casey at the Bat!), riddles, and funny epitaphs.

In Animal Poems, Valerie Worth captures the uniqueness of animals ranging from bear to porcupine to mole to jellyfish in brief but rich free-verse word pictures.  Stunning paper-cut animal illustrations by Steve Jenkins accompany the poems.

Joyce Sidman is our premier nature poet for children.  Her extraordinary books explore the natural world with vivid poems in various forms, based on solid science. Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature’s Survivors depicts animals that have adapted around the world and are definitely not endangered. See also her other titles , including her Caldecott Honor Winner Song of the Water Boatman and Winter Bees 

A good way to discover new poems and poets you love is to browse through anthologies with a variety of poets and poems. 
In Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets, Kwame Alexander, Chris Coldly and Mary Wentworth have written poems in homage  to great poets past and present who have inspired them., reflecting their styles and ideas.  The subjects include  Maya Angelou, Basho, e.e.cummings, Emily Dickinson, Walter Dean Myers, Pablo Neruda , Mary Olver, Rumi, and even Chief Dan George.  A joyful book with bold illustrations by Ekua Holmes.

Poet Naomi Shihab Nye is also a superb anthologist with a special interest in poems from less familiar voices.  See The Space Between our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East, and This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from around the World.  She also compiled a collection of poems written by her students in poetry-in-the-schools classes over the years: Salting the Ocean: 100 poems by Young Poets. 

More and more novels in verse are appearing, most of them for at adult readers.
A wonderful exception is Kwame Alexander’s be-bop and free verse Newbery Award winner The Crossover. Here’s what Publisher’s Weeklyhad to say in its review of the book: “The poems dodge and weave with the speed of a point guard driving for the basket, mixing basketball action with vocabulary-themed poems, newspaper clippings, and Josh’s sincere first-person accounts that swing from moments of swagger-worth triumph to profound pain.” A page turner, even if you’re not especially a sports fan.  See also the other books in his Crossover series: Booked and Rebound.

Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate is a spare, quieter free-verse novel published in 2007 that still resonates in the present moment. This touching story of a young Sudanese war refugee trying to find his way in America is told through his own eyes and voice.

Middle Graders love humor.  Here are some books that take pitch-perfect aim at the middle-grade funny bone.

I’m loving Chris Harris’s I’m Just no Good at Rhyming and other Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grownups.  Of course he is good at rhyming, but kids will find the title poem hilarious.

Caleb Brown is also a humor treasure, especially his Hypnotize a Tiger: Poems about Just about Everything.  See also The Ghostly Carousel: Delightfully Frightful Poems.  He has a new book coming out in June, Up Verses Down: Poems, Paintings, and Serious Nonsense.

Douglas Florian is  best known for his slightly younger books of clever word-play and paintings.  But he has two big books of humor: Poem Depot, Aisles of Smiles and Laugh-eteria. He has also collaborated with  J. Patrick Lewis in the wildly clever Poem-Mobiles: Crazy Car Poems.

Younger middle-grade fans of Shel Silverstein are in for a treat with his posthumously published book of spoonerisms  Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook.

What about middle-graders who would not only like to read poetry but to write their own?  Of course the best way to learn to write is to read and write and write some more.  But the following books may give young writers some encouragement and inspiration:

Kathi Appelt, Poems from Homeroom : A Writer’s Place to Start

Ralph Fletcher, Poetry Matters: Writing a Poem from the Inside Out and Writer’s Notebook: Unlocking the Writer Within You.

Paul B. Janeczko, A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms

Ted Kooser, The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets.

 

 

Readers, the hardest part about compiling this list was choosing from all the possibilities!  Please use the comments to add poetry titles you think or know from experience middle-graders would love.  Then let’s all get to our bookshelves, independent bookstore, or local library and celebrate National Poetry Month!

Back to Top

Agent Spotlight: Rena Rossner

By on December 31, 2018   /   Articles, Editor / Agent Spotlight  

Literary agent and author Rena Rossner is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars Program, where she majored in poetry and non-fiction writing. She also holds an MA in History from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She lives in Israel where she works as a literary and foreign rights agent at the Deborah Harris Literary Agency in Jerusalem. Rena’s debut historical fantasy novel, The Sisters of the Winter Wood, published in September, 2018.

Rena says: “You can usually find me cooking or reading, but I also do ceramics (in my non-existent spare time) and have been known to do yoga and take walks with my pug, Pablo. Did I mention I have five kids? Yeah. That too.”

Find out more about Rena and how to query her at www.renarossner.com.

Hi Rena! I know this is a crazy busy month for you—thanks so much for agreeing to chat with us. What have you been up to lately?

Most recently, I finished writing my second novel. But before that I returned from a five-week trip to the USA, a combination of being on book tour for my own first novel, The Sisters Of The Winter Wood, combined with editor meetings in New York City on behalf of my clients. I attended World Fantasy Con in Baltimore, YALLFEST in Charleston, and the Miami Book Fair – where various authors of mine were speaking and signing books.

Talk to me about middle grade novels in verse. I know you studied poetry at Johns Hopkins. What do you think a verse novel can do for middle grade readers that a prose novel can’t?

Well, novels in verse have a very special place in my heart. I was a poet first, before I decided to try my hand at fiction, and The Sisters Of The Winter Wood is written in two voices – one sister narrates in verse and one sister narrates in prose.

I also represent two middle grade novels in verse – Rachel Toalson’s The Colors of the Rain which came out in September 2018. And the upcoming ALL OF ME by Chris Baron which comes out in June 2019.

Something about novels in verse can be more dramatic than prose. Verse leaves space on the page, room for breath, room for thought. Room for the reader to fill in the blanks. Novels in verse can be more emotive than novels in prose because they take readers on an emotional journey. I absolutely love working with writers who were clearly poets first. You can tell, on the sentence level, that there is something different about their work.

I just finished reading ALL OF ME. I read through tears for the last hundred pages. This was easily the most moving MG book I’ve ever read about being a “big” kid. You’re right, the emotions just cut right through in a good verse novel, because it’s so spare.

2019 is going to be a big year for you! You represent three of my new middle grade debut pals, Cory Leonardo, Chris Baron, and Sofiya Pasternack whose first books for middle graders are publishing in 2019. Cory’s THE SIMPLE ART OF FLYING features a poetry-spouting parrot who eats the Norton Anthology of Poetry page by page. Sofiya’s 9th century historical fantasy ANYA KOZLOVA AND THE DRAGON has Vikings! And a water dragon! Can you tell us more about them? What did you love about each of these novels when their queries first hit your inbox?

2019 is going to be a great year for middle grade! Both Cory and Sofiya came to me as a result of PitchWars, actually! Cory and I connected back in 2016 as a result of the contest. I fell madly in love not only with her parrots (I am a bird lover and was the owner of a very precocious cockatiel when I was a teen) but her poetry and wit. Her book reduced me to a blubbering mess of tears, absolutely had me hooked. (Also, cherry crumble pie.)

Sofiya and I connected in 2017. Her story about a little Jewish girl who must choose between saving her home and protecting a water dragon blew me away with its originality. But it also hit my sweet spot – bringing more Jewish fantasy to the world, especially more diverse Jewish fantasy set in all different places and time periods. Her main character Anya has spunk, but she also bakes challah. I mean, what could really be better than that?

Chris was a cold query, but when I read his book, I was instantly smitten. I had never been reduced to tears in the space of a few lines of poetry before! ALL OF ME is about a boy around the time is his bar mitzvah who struggles with his weight. As someone who has struggled with her weight her whole life, and who has boys who have struggled with the same issue around the time of their bar mitzvahs – this book really hit home for me in a very deep way.

There’s been a lot of discussion among Jewish children’s authors of late on social media, particularly in light of anti-Semitic acts both here in the U.S. and in Europe. Do you think Jewish writers are underrepresented in kid lit? What kinds of books by Jewish authors or about Jewish characters would you like to see more of?

For me, it’s less that Jewish writers are underrepresented and more that certain types of Jewish stories are underrepresented. I think we need to showcase more of the multiplicity of Jewish experience in children’s literature. Jews have literally lived in almost every country in the world, and I want us to see more of their stories. Jews from Shanghai, Morocco, Cuba, Ethiopia and Yemen all have stories to tell. But their stories are not well represented in the canon of Jewish children’s literature.

I also think we don’t see enough diverse Jewish families and stories about all the different ways in which people identify as Jewish – including blended families, unaffiliated families, LGBQT Jewish families, Jews who have converted to Judaism, and more.

So much Jewish children’s literature tends to be about the Holocaust. And while that’s always going to be super important (I even sold a Holocaust memoir that came out last year called Claiming My Place by Planaria Price and Helen West), Jewish history is full of so many stories – some tragic, others full of incredible moments of resistance and heroism. I want to see more of those stories told as well.

On a personal note, I’m a huge fan of Jewish fantasy and SciFi, and I’m always looking to see more of that. We haven’t scratched the surface of what Judaism has to offer the SFF world. I can’t wait to bring more of those types of stories onto the shelves of bookstores.

What’s on your wish list for middle grade now? Why?

I’d love to see more novels in verse. I’m a huge fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy of all types. Books that make me cry:  so, real, heartfelt middle grade stories that turn me into a blubbering mess of tears. I’m a sucker for beautiful writing, strong female (and male!) characters, and stories based on different mythologies and folklore. I love a good fairy tale re-telling, but bring me fairy tales from all over the world that and retell them in a way we haven’t seen before.

I love stories full of puzzles and whip-smart kids – like the books that another one of my authors, Ben Guterson, writes. His Winterhouse series (THE SECRETS OF WINTERHOUSE comes out December 31, 2019!) is a perfect example of that type of middle grade story that I love and would love to see more of! And of course, any middle grade that showcases the multiplicity of the Jewish experience.

Any genre you simply can’t stand?

I don’t know if there is any genre that I can’t stand – I read pretty widely. But I’m not the best person for a book about sports or for most straight non-fiction. Having said that, I’d love to be proven wrong! I never know what I will see in my inbox and what I will fall in love with. So I don’t really like to make any kind of absolute statements. I like to be surprised.

Are you an editorial agent? Is there any one piece of advice you give to middle grade authors? In other words, are there any common kinds of problems that you are good at helping MG authors fix?

I’m a super editorial agent (as many of my authors can attest to).  I’m not afraid to cut a novel in half, if that’s what’s needed. I think that many novels in verse tend to be too long – those are often the ones I end up having to do the most work on.

Middle Grade is tough to write because it’s hard to nail the right voice. It’s important to talk to kids that age – but I mean, really talk to them. Find out what they’re thinking, what’s important to them, what they find funny. I’m lucky to have middle graders who live with me, and my kids are an invaluable resource to help me know what will or won’t work for kids their age.

What’s missing in the middle-grade marketplace now? The big sinkhole in the room that we’re not seeing?

Well, once upon a time I would have said: more books for middle grade boys, and especially for boys who are struggling with their weight. More books about body positivity. But I am so happy that Chris Baron’s book ALL OF ME is now going to be out in the world, because I think it fills a big hole in the MG space.

We need to make sure that every kid can see himself or herself reflected in fiction, to do so much more work to bring diverse stories and diverse voices to MG shelves. I’m super proud of a book that came out in October 2018, Charlie Hernandez and the League of Shadows by Ryan Calejo. We need more books like that.

How does what you do as an agent influence your art as a fiction writer, or vice versa?

Sometimes people think it gives me an edge in the industry. But the truth is, I went through just as much rejection (if not more…) as anyone else. When The Sisters of the Winter Wood sold, it was with my third agent, the third book I had been out on submission with.

Having said that, I definitely saw a hole in the market and decided to fill it. I wanted to write a fantasy novel about two Orthodox Jewish teen heroines – the kind of book that I wish had been around for me when I was a teen. But I don’t think you need to be an agent to know what’s missing from bookstore shelves today. You just need to read a lot and pay attention. I do think that my authors benefit from my being able to have a lot of empathy. I know what they are going through, often intimately.

Anything you’d like to elaborate on that I haven’t asked you? How’s life treating you?

Life is incredibly busy, but great! I can’t wait to see what 2019 will bring, but I certainly hope it bring more great middle grade authors my way!

Huge thanks, Rena! It was great to speak with you.

Back to Top

Diverse MG Lit #4 American Indian Books

By on November 16, 2018   /   Diversity  
November is traditionally the month of focus on American Indian history, and fortunately there is much to celebrate this year. It was my very great pleasure to hear many Indigenous authors and poets reading and discussing their work at the Portland Book Festival. One among them was Tommy Orange the author of the National Book Award nominee THERE, THERE. It’s not a book designed for the MG audience but it is within reach of strong readers who are looking for hard-hitting contemporary realism. I think many seventh and eighth grade readers would find much to love. It is the intertwined story of twelve people on their way to a powwow in Oakland and offers plenty of ideas for the thoughtful reader to absorb and discuss.
It was also my great pleasure to hear a reading and discussion of their poetry from Trevino Brings Plenty, Laura Da’, and Layli Long Soldier. They are all three contributors to the anthology NEW POETS OF NATIVE NATIONS edited by Heid Erdrich. This is also a book published for the adult market. But of all adult writing I think poetry can be the most accessible to younger readers. Here is a snippet of example from a poem called Passive Voice by Laura Da’ a middle school teacher and Eastern Shawnee.

Passive Voice

Laura Da’

I use a trick to teach students
how to avoid passive voice.
Circle the verbs.
Imagine inserting “by zombies”
after each one.
Have the words been claimed
by the flesh-hungry undead?
if so, passive voice
This poem goes on and becomes even more searing and evocative with each line, talking about how the crimes of the past against indigenous people are usually reported in the passive voice. Now there’s a conversation I’d love to have in the classroom. I am beyond excited to read all the poems in this anthology and to follow the literary careers launched there.
On the more traditional side of MG publishing Joseph Bruchac has a new novel TWO ROADS. Much has been written about the abuses of the Indian Boarding Schools and it’s easy, if you don’t live in the west, to think that Indian boarding schools are a thing of the past. Although most of them closed 80 to 100 years ago, some operated much longer and under slightly reformed conditions. Bruchac’s story takes place in 1932 and is about a Creek Indian boy, Cal Black, and his father a WWI veteran who live a transient life. When the father decides to join a protest with other veterans in Washington to demand their wartime bonuses, he decides to leave his son at the Challagi Indian School in Oklahoma. The most brutal practices of the Indian schools are past at the time of this story, still there is much hardship to endure. Even so Cal learns about his own culture and gains the strength of knowing other young men of his tribe.  This resonates with the stories I have heard from elders who attended Indian schools in the 1930s and 40s. They found much hardship there, but they also found their voice as Native people and a community that would go on to become part of many of the movements, AIM and others, that lead to the recent pipeline protests. Two Roads is an important book and one that I hope will be widely read.
Also on the topic of Indian schools but originating in Canada is SPEAKING OUR TRUTH: A Journey of Reconciliation by Monique Gray Smith. It is a larger format, photo illustrated work of non-fiction about the journey of reconciliation addressing Canada’s past, present and future relationship with its First Nations People. Monique Gray Smith asks her readers to leave behind these attitudes
  • I’ve heard this all before
  • Reconciliation doesn’t involve me or my friends or my family
  • History isn’t important
  • I, as one person, can’t make a difference
She organizes her book according to Seven Sacred Teachings: Honesty, Respect, Love, Courage, Truth, Humility, and Wisdom. The book is packed with information. It’s a book to read slowly. Every few pages there is a spot illustration of a drum and an invitation to reflect. Definitions are placed on the page where the words first occur in addition to a glossary in the back. I thought the book would make me feel sad and ashamed but because so much of it is focused on things everyone can do now to make it better I felt much hope by the end. This book is rooted in Canadian history but the issues are so similar to American ones that I think you could use it in the US. But I’d love to see and American version of this concept too.
And finally I want to call attention to a group of picture book legends. Many teachers are looking for authentic indigenous legends to use in the curriculum and want to make sure they are using books of the best quality. I think when it comes to traditional tales, the way to get the authentic versions we are looking for is to have the tribes publish themselves. The Sealaska Heritage Institute does just this. Their award winning books are produced from start to finish by professional indigenous storytellers, world-class indigenous artists and indigenous publishers. They have an imprint called Baby Raven Reads which focuses on stories from the Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Haida traditions. There are many beautiful books in this imprint. I’m going to highlight Shanyaak’utlaax—Salmon Boy edited by Johnny Marks, Hans Chester, David Katzeek, Nora Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer and illustrated by Michaela Goade. It is the Tlingit story of a boy who disrespects the salmon his mother gives him and is swept away into the ocean to meet the Salmon People. It is written in Lingít and English with a Lingít audio available on line. Michaela Goade is a Tlingit Raven from the Kiks.ádi clan of Sitka, Alaska. These books are not available through the normal channels but don’t be discouraged you can get them through Taku Graphics in Juneau, AK. Email Katrina Woolford at orders@takugraphics.com for more information. Learn more about Baby Raven Reads at www.sealaskaheritage.org.
If you have a favorite book with Native American characters, please share it in the comments.
Back to Top