Poetry

Bibliography
Grandits, John. c2007. Blue Lipstick: Concrete Poems. New York: Clarion Books. ISBN 9780618568604






Plot Summary
Jessie is a 15 year old freshman in high school who plays volleyball and the cello. She fights with her little brother. She wants to stand out in the crowd yet she wants to fit in. She feels misunderstood. She is full of angst. She is a typical teenage girl. She writes poetry to express her thoughts and emotions. She writes her poetry in concrete form. The poems take on the shape of the subject of the poem. Some of the things she writes about are: a bad hair day, her teachers, her parents, her cat, her friends, her family, playing volleyball and the cello.

Critical Analysis
This book is written by a grown man, John Grandits but it totally has the voice of a teenage girl. He capture’s the angst so well. Most teenage girls will be able to relate to Jessie and her daily life’s trials and tribulations.

The concrete poems were written using over 50 different typeface fonts. The use of a variety of typeface fonts make each concrete poem unique and somehow fits with each topic. For example the poem "Grownups Talking:" uses a few different fonts to distinguish between the questions and comments Jessie hears from adults and her thoughts. The use of fonts is also cleverly used to describe the differences between Jessie and her friend in "Silver Spandex" as the lines of the poems are written to take the shape of a guitar and a cello.

Some drawings are mixed in with the poem to add effect. For example "The Wall" is a free verse poem written on the background of a brick wall with names and small descriptions of people in Jessie's life on both sides of the wall.

Other poems you have to twist and turn the book around to read it but that only adds to the effect of how most typical teenage girls think and feel. "Bad Hair Day" is an excellent example of this. It is about one day when Jessie decides to color her hair blue and then regrets it after it is done because it did not have the desired effect. The lines of the poem take the shape of her hair. The page is black with a simple line drawn as the top of a head and two eyes. Half of the head has white text that represent her bleached hair, and the other half has blue text and the lines go in different directions to represent the blue dyed hair gone bad.

Although Boo Boo kitty yawned at Jessie’s reading of her English Assignment to “create a poem for someone you love: then read it out loud to him or her.” Boo Book kitty did have fun playing with it and loved it so much that she ate it. You will not yawn while reading these poems but you will have so much fun reading them that you might want to eat one up, just don’t puke it back up like Boo Boo kitty.

Review Excerpts
The Horn Book v. 83 no. 4 (July/August 2007) p. 408-9
Grandits playfully, and quite effectively, channels a teenage girl's dreams, anxieties, and pet peeves—all in a series of concrete poems, no less—in this much stronger follow-up to Technically, It's Not My Fault. We first meet ninth-grader Jessie on the book's cover, as she's busy defending her lipstick purchase. . . . Her words (i.e., the poem) form the frame kissed by electric-blue lips. It's a cover that'll grab adolescent girls' attention—and the poetry inside is equally appealing. . . . It's to Grandits's credit that his protagonist isn't confined to a 2D existence. She leaps right off the page, in turn feisty and insecure."

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books v. 61 no. 1 (September 2007) p. 26-7
"While the entries are absolutely prose rather than poetry, and it would have helped tremendously to have an up-front clue that this is a narrative series rather than a collection of discrete elements, the sequence is genuinely clever and effective. . . . Design is friendly and accessible, with black complemented by a cool peacock blue that offers contrast in both typeface and shaded backgrounds, and the multiplicity of fonts (identified on the last page) are thoughtfully employed. This has enough acuity to appeal to fans of sophisticated poetry and enough energy to draw those who find the sophisticated stuff merely dull, and it will undoubtedly inspire a multitude of curricular uses."

Awards
LEE BENNETT HOPKINS POETRY AWARD, 2008 Honor Book, United States.

SCHOOL LIBRARY MEDIA JOURNAL BEST BOOKS, 2007

Notable Children's Books, 2008 ALSC

Connections
Students can create and write their own concrete poems.

The author's note is a poem titled "Pocket Poem". It is about a few poems the author keeps in his pocket to carry with him daily “in case of an emotional emergency.” Students can read poems and find a few favorite ones to carry their pocket and read it whenever they need a “little snack for the soul”.

Read "Technically, It's Not my Fault: Concret Poems" also by John Grandits. This book is a companion book for Blue Lipstick. It contains concrete poems written by Jessie’s little brother, Robert.

Grandits, John. 2004. TECHNICALLY, IT'S NOT MY FAULT: CONCRETE POEMS. NewYork: Clarion. ISBN 061842833X







Bibliography
Singer, Marilyn. 2010. Mirror Mirror. Illus. by Josee Masse. NewYork: Dutton. ISBN 0525479015







Plot Summary
Mirror, Mirror is a book of reversible verse. The poems can be read forward and backwards. Traditional fairy tales and folk tales usually have a hero and villain. Each side is presented in a short poem and if you flip the poem and read it backwards, the other side's viewpoint is revealed. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, The Ugly Duckling, Snow White, Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldilocks, Hansel and Gretal, Rumplestiltskin, The Frog Prince, and Beauty and the Beast are the tales used to tell these reverso poems.

Critical Analysis
Reverso is a form of poetry that is written to be read forward and backwards. It take a different meaning when it is read backwards. Here is an example of what reversible verse looks like that is on the back cover of the book.

UP
or
Down-
A poem
in
a puzzle


A puzzle
in
a poem-
Down
or
Up

It is a clever poetic devise and works well with fairy tales and folktales. Most of the poems present the hero and villian's view. It works well with some poems such as "In the Hood" which presents the perspective of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. There are other poems such as "Rapunzel's Locks" in which it was hard to tell which character's voice was used for the poems. Another poem, " The Doubltful Duckling" present the point of view of the ugly duckling and his struggle with self acceptance of his looks.

Each double page layout has two poems and an illustration. The illustrations are brilliantly designed to also tell both sides of the story. A scene from each tale is spilt in half showing both the sides of the story and poems. The split flows from one character/poem to the other seemlessly with contrasting colors or alternating light and dark colors.

Reversible verse is a new and interesting way to tell old fairy tales and folk tales. Children will have fun reading the poems and identifying with the characters from each poem. Adults will marvel at the brillance it took to write the poems and the choice of words to make the poems work as reversible verse.

Review excerpts
The Horn Book v. 86 no. 2 (March/April 2010) p. 79-80
"Through a poetic invention she dubs the reverso, Singer meditates on twelve familiar folktales, and, via the magic of shifting line breaks and punctuation, their shadows. . . . In the main, the poems are both cleverly constructed and insightful about their source stories, giving us the points of view of characters rarely considered. Similarly bifurcated illustrations, Shrek-bright, face the poems. . . . Primary, intermediate."

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books v. 63 no. 8 (April 2010) p. 353
"Talented poet Singer here creates her own poetic form, dubbed by her ‘reversos’: a verse that reveals a different poem when the lines are reversed bottom to top, with changes only in punctuation, capitalization, and line breaks. Fourteen such top-to-bottom/bottom-to-top pairings are featured, all focusing on folklore, most on particular tales, and the result is neatly, astonishingly clever."

Awards
Cybils (Children’s and Young Adult bloggers’ literary awards) Award in Poetry 2010

Connections
Read the original versions of each fairy tale or folk tale.

Young students can identify which character's voice is telling the poem.

Older students might try to compose a sentence or two that can be read forward and backwards. Only punctuation and capitalization is allowed to be changed, not the words.










Bibliography
Frost, Helen. 2008. Diamond Willow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0374317763









Plot Summary
Willow is a normal 12 year old Athabascan girl who lives in a small town in Alaska. She is a typical 12 year old, trying to find herself and her place in her world. She wants to be independent and begs her parents to allow her to mush the family dogs to her grandparent’s house, 12 miles away. Her parents reluctantly agree and Willow sets off on her first solo trip. Along the way the spirits of her past ancestors watch over her in various animal forms. Her first trip was successful but on her return trip she takes a turn to fast and runs into a fallen tree which blinds the lead dog, Roxy. Willow’s parents decide that Roxy must be euthanized and when Willow realizes what they plan to do she decides to take Roxy to her grandparent’s house to save her. Willow convinces her best friend to go with her and the two girls take off and along the way a snowstorm starts. They veer off the main trail and have trouble finding their way back before it gets dark. The girls take refuge under a spruce tree for the night. They survive the night and Willow makes it to her grandparent’s house with Roxy. Willow’s parents are relieved she is OK and she convinces them to keep Roxy. They decide it is time to let her know about a family secret and the significance of everything in her life comes to light.

Critical Analysis
Most of this story is told in free verse, diamond shaped poems for Willow’s narration and prose for her ancestors who are reincarnated into animals that Willow encounters on her journey. There is another poem told through bolded words within each diamond poem.

The imagery of the diamond shaped poem is significant because not only is it Diamond Willow’s name, it is also symbolizes her life. The diamond willow tree takes it name because when the bark is removed, sanded and polished, there are reddish-brown diamonds with a dark center. The center is the scar of a missing branch that had broken off. It is easy to envision the diamonds on the wood through the different shaped diamond form of each poem. The bolded words within each diamond shaped poem, which are meant to resemble the scar of the missing branch, reveals another poem which is Willow's journey to self discovery.

This story could have easily been told in prose but the diamond shaped poems have so much significance in this story that part of its emotional impact would be lost. It would just be another story about a young girl’s journey of self discovery.

Review Excerpts
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books v. 61 no. 10 (June 2008) p. 424-5
"Frost invents an ingenious poetic form for her story. . . . Interspersed with [the] poems are prose passages from the perspective of Willow's late ancestors and relatives, whose spirits now inhabit animals that watch over the girl as she ventures into the fraught territory between childhood and adolescence. Frost has spun metaphoric gold out of an evocative natural landscape, and she knows just how to craft it into an elegant and moving story of a young girl's deepening understanding of the relationships she shares with those around her."

The Horn Book v. 84 no. 4 (July/August 2008) p. 444
"The first-person, present-tense narrative is typeset in diamond shapes echoing the pattern of diamond willow wood. Bold-faced words at the heart of each diamond hold an additional nugget of meaning. As a dog and dogsled story, this has appeal and wears its knowledge gracefully. Considerably less graceful is Frost's inclusion of animal guides who are the spirits of Willow's deceased relatives and who function as fairy-godmother figures to assist her; the blend of realism and magic-cum-religion stretches credulity just a little too far."

Connections
Students can write their own diamond shaped poems.

Students can read books about Alaska and dog sledding.