Poetry Power: Poetic Language in Signs

Guest Post by Janet Wong

More people than ever are expressing themselves with art supplies. During the week before the Inauguration and Women’s March(es), people spent $6 million on poster boards and paint markers. While some signs were overtly political, many signs were simple affirmations of our humanity.

With a few Google searches (“protest signs,” “protest art,” “kids protest,” etc.) I found over a thousand examples of inspiring and appealing signs. Many of the most effective signs use poetic devices such as rhyme, repetition, rhythm, alliteration, and wordplay to help them stand out from the crowd—and present learning opportunities for writers. Consider the following examples:

Rhyme: This rhyming text is so much more powerful than, say, “No hatred where I live.”

Repetition: She could’ve said, “No ban, wall, or division.” Would that have been as effective? No, no, no.

Alliteration: “Eighty-nine, feisty, and determined” just doesn’t pack the same punch.

Rhyme, Repetition, and Rhythm: This sign benefits from all three devices: rhyme, repetition, and rhythm. 

And look at these clever examples of wordplay: 

With dozens of favorite signs, it was hard to choose a favorite—but the best sign of all, to me, was probably this one, completely universal in its message and held high:

Which brings me to the point of this piece. Let’s empower kids to make signs. 

   

Look at the pride on these kids’ faces!

Parents can help kids make signs at home, as language arts exercises. The following sign even satisfies a Common Core requirement to teach students about the use of quotes.

I am not a particularly “political” person, but I am making a greater effort to inform myself, to engage, and to volunteer for all sorts of activities in an attempt to make a daily difference. To inspire you to get involved in whatever inspires you, here is a prewriting exercise and the title poem from my latest book with Sylvia Vardell, Here We Go: A Poetry Friday Power Book.  I hope that you are inspired to do something like starting a walkathon at your school—and, if you do, make sure to bring sign-making supplies for everyone!

BIO: Janet Wong (janetwong.com) is the author of 30 books for children and teens, and the co-creator (with Sylvia Vardell) of The Poetry Friday Anthology series and Poetry Friday Power Book series. (PomeloBooks.com).

SPRING, SPRING, SING A SONG!

by Alison Ashley Formento

Spring is springing everywhere and it's easy to imagine dancing through a field of flowers and spinning around, full of song on top of a mountain like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.

One of my favorite interviews I did for a magazine was with country singer and multiple-award-winnning songwriter Dierks Bentley. We spoke about the best picture books having a musicality flowing through the rhythm of the words, echoing the same craft used in writing great songs.

National Poetry Month has just ended, but poetry is a part of our daily lives. We're attuned and attracted to patterns and rhythms in words we hear in songs and those we read, too. You can keep a "poem in your pocket" or "sing, sing a song" every day, at any time. I think of this as mind music and it's what gives songs that hook that makes you want to sing along and what gives great picture books that readability that makes you want to read them again and again.

I used rhythm and a song-style phrasing in sections of my nature picture books. In This Tree Counts!, the character Eli says, "Tree house, tree house in the sky, grow some wings and I can fly!" That line rhymes, but you can use sounds to create a rhythm without rhyming, too. In These Rocks Count!, a characters says, "Hot or cold, wind, snow, and rain—rocks get old, cycle of change."

Mind Music Writing Prompts

These phrases from some golden oldies can prompt students to write their own short chorus and create a refrain that can be shared aloud. Choose prompts from poems or songs which have a natural rhythm like these to help students spring, spring, sing on their own. 

I did it my way.

Don't step on my blue suede shoes.

The Camptown ladies sing this song.

Take me out to the ballgame.

What a day for a daydream. 

www.alisonashleyformento.com

LIBRARIES RULE!

guest post by Sue Fliess

Not that you needed a good reason to talk about the importance of libraries, but just in case you were looking for one…Books for Me! is the rhyming story of a young Hippo girl and her Dad going on an outing to their local library to find great books. This book is the third adventure with our young Hippo, illustrated once again by Mike Laughead. In Shoes for Me!, she makes a trip to the shoe store with Mom to pick out a pair of new shoes. In A Dress for Me!, she gets to choose a new dress. When I do school visits, I always get a plethora of wonderful suggestions for more “for me” adventures for Hippo. See what your class comes up with…I’d love to hear them!

Books for Me! is about the joy of discovering all kinds of books—adventure, science fiction, mystery, history, folktales, non-fiction—and how a library is the perfect place to do it. It’s an opportunity to talk to kids about fiction versus non-fiction, the different sections of the library, and what a librarian does. Get them thinking about what kinds of books they are drawn to—help them discover their favorite genre. 

Another fun activity you can do with your students as you read this book to them is to talk about rhyme. Ask them to help you finish the sentence and talk about the rhyme they hear at the end of the stanzas. For example: “Lots of choices I can see. Will I find some books for me?”

Have your students help you write a rhyming poem. I usually have kids fill in the last word of the alternating line or lines. Here’s an example:

Winter is cold, but snow is fun.

Summer is hot from the yellow _____.

In addition, you could have your students try their hand at their own poem, rhyming or otherwise. The idea is to get them thinking of their own stories and writing them down.

See if your class can identify some of the books that have been worked into the illustrations and the text, such as “Books on mittens (The Mitten by Jan Brett), broken chairs, mice and moons (Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown) and puzzled bears (The Three Bears).” They will likely recognize many. If possible, have these books on-hand also, so they can see how the covers were included in Books for Me!

Questions you can ask: 

What is rhyme? 

Can you give an example of some rhyming word pairs?

What’s your favorite book/story? Is it fiction or non-fiction?

Name one thing you learned from a book this year.

What’s your favorite part about the library?

Why do we go to the library? (no wrong answer here J)

If we can help kids see now that libraries are windows to the big world they’re in, they’ll develop a lifelong love of reading.  

Bio: Sue Fliess ("fleece") is the author of eighteen children's books (published or forthcoming) including Tons of Trucks, Robots, Robots Everywhere!, How to Be a Superhero, and most recently, The Hug Book and Books for Me! Her background is in copywriting, public relations, marketing, and event planning, and her articles and essays have appeared in O,the Oprah Magazine, Huffington Post, Writer's Digest, Education.com, Daily Candy Kids, Travelmuse.com, and more. Fliess's picture books have received honors from the Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and have been used as curriculum teaching tools in elementary school classrooms as well as children's educational programs in museums. She's an active member of SCBWI, the Children’s Book Guild of D.C. and The Author’s Guild. Sue lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, two boys, and a Labrador puppy named Charlie. Visit her online at www.suefliess.com

WRITING AND COMMON CORE CONNECTIONS WITH SUSAN STOCKDALE

by Mary Quattlebaum

Schools are abuzz with talk of Common Core.  What are the challenges for students, teachers of writing, and those who write for children?  How might the new standards be best implemented to enhance writing as well as reading and information-processing skills?  In exploring these questions, I’m delighted to welcome acclaimed author/illustrator Susan Stockdale to Pencil Tips. When it comes to nonfiction, Susan embraces beauty and accuracy.  Her books on the natural world, including her newest, Stripes (Peachtree 2013), are scrupulously researched and stunningly presented, both in terms of language and image.   Check www.susanstockdale.com  for more information on Susan’s books and activities.

1. Your new book, Stripes, is in the style of your award-winning titles Bring on the Birds and Fabulous Fishes, with back matter that helps the book to grow with the reader. Can you share your greatest joy in writing and illustrating it?

My greatest joy in creating the book was when I determined my approach for writing it. I decided to write rhyming verses for the animals’ habitats and to show each animal in action in its particular home: "Propped on a log,/poised on a leaf./ Scaling a ridge, /and scouting a reef." From a writing standpoint, this gave me the opportunity to highlight where the animals live and use some verbs that might be new to children. From a visual standpoint, I was able to paint some wonderful and diverse environments.

2.  What about your biggest challenge?

My biggest challenge was deciding which animal to illustrate for each line of text. I had many choices. For example, for my line “poised on a leaf,” I illustrated a zebra swallowtail butterfly, but I considered a Colorado potato beetle, a leafhopper, a red shield bug, a bumblebee, a caterpillar and other creatures. I chose the butterfly because I thought it was the most visually appealing of all my candidates and would be fun to paint  - an important consideration!

Here is the progression of my badger illustration:

Sketch 1: the badger that is "prowling the prairie"  

looks pretty meek here!

 

Sketch 2: now the badger looks more like it's prowling

  

Image 3: final acrylic painting

 

3.  Thank you for sharing the evolution of that particular image!  It’s fascinating to see how you add ever-greater detail to the depiction of the badger and its habitat.  Do you have a writing or drawing prompt that might connect with the book?

As a fun and easy warm-up exercise, I give children a sticky note and ask them to write an adjective describing a photo or painting we are observing. (There’s something about writing just one word on a little piece of paper that takes the intimidation out of writing.) Then I gather up the notes and ask the children to direct me as I arrange and rearrange their words on the wall. The results can be surprising and sometimes beautifully poetic. This prompt demonstrates how changing the order of words changes their meaning, and how a small change can make a big difference.

Thank you, Susan.  I know you’re already hard at work on your next nonfiction book, Spots, and look forward to sharing that one with my students, too.

www.maryquattlebaum.com

SOLSTICE LULLABIES

by Laura Krauss Melmed

As I write this exactly one week after the horrific Newtown shootings, in the midst of the frenetic holiday season, and during the darkest day of the year, it occurred to me that this is a time in which we might all be in need of some soothing.  What better to fit the bill than a lullaby?  Lullabies are meant to put children to sleep and for that reason, both words and music must have a calming effect.  Lullaby songs have appeared across cultures and languages and have been sung down the ages.  Lullabies are also a popular theme for bedtime books.

In my first published book, The First Song Ever Sung, illustrated by Ed Young (and sadly out of print but available from third party sellers on Amazon) a little boy questions all the members of his family as well as the fish in the brook, the birds in the sky, and his pet dog to find out the answer to his question, “What was the first song ever sung?”  Each human or animal provides an answer in terms of something very important to him or her.  In the last verse, the boy’s mother tells him that the first song ever sung was, “a mother’s song, a hush song, a sleep song, a love song”… in other words, a lullaby.  In writing this text, I utilized repetition, which has a lulling effect, and slant rhymes, or words that almost rhyme, to keep it from getting too sing-song-y.  (As a side note, I actually wrote this first as a lullaby to my own son Jonathan.)

In another of my titles, I Love You As Much, illustrated by Henri Sorensen, various mother animals express their love for their little ones, again each one in her unique way:

Said the mother horse to her child,

I love you as much as a warm summer breeze

Said the mother bear to her child,

I love you as much as the forest had trees.

Here the text is in simple couplets, again using repetition and rhyme for a lulling effect.  The last spread pairs a human mother and child with a couplet that reads,

Now sleep child of mine as the stars shine above

I love you as much as a mother can love.

Susan Campbell Bartoletti has created a unique lullaby book called Naamah And The Ark At Night, with fabulous collage illustrations by Holly Meade.  Bartoletti show us Naamah, the wife of Noah, singing gently throughout the night to soothe the human and animal pairs that inhabit the ark.  The form of the book was inspired by an old Arabic poetic structure galled a ghazal. It requires each couplet to end in the same word, preceded by a rhyming word. In Bartoletti’s hands this form creates a tender, hypnotic bedtime song.

For a collection of more traditional lullabies, see Kay Chorao’s The Baby’s Bedtime Book. It contains songs in the folk tradition, such as "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" and "All the Pretty Horses," as well lullabies written by poets such as William Blake, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

For a writing exercise, try identifying the elements of a lullaby and then writing one from the point of view of a human parent, an animal, a fairy tale character, or even an alien on another planet. After all, everyone needs a little soothing now and then.

www.laurakraussmelmed.com