Toucan Can!
by Juliette Maclver (Author) and Sarah Davis (Illustrator)
Booktalk: Enjoy this mad-cap rhyme as Toucan demonstrates all the things he can do! Can you do them too?
Snippet:
Toucan can do lots of things!
Toucan dances!
Toucan sings!
This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up will be hosted by Writing the World for Kids.
Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Voices from the March on Washington
by J. Patrick Lewis (Author) and George Ella Lyon (Author)
Booktalk: This powerful poetry collection weaves together the voices of six fictional narrators to tell the story of the March on Washington, DC, in 1963.
RAYMOND JARVIS, 25
B.A. DEGREE IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
OUT-OF-WORK STORE CLERK
AMARILLO, TEXAS
THE RIDE
When we take our seats, the bus comes alive
honeybee people swarming to a hive,
buzzing with excitement and disbelief
at doing something to ease our grief.
This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up will be hosted by The Poem Farm.
Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Dear Wandering Wildebeest: And Other Poems from the Water Hole
by Irene Latham (Author) and Anna Wadham (Illustrator)
Booktalk: Spend a day at a water hole on the African grasslands in this poetry collection with facts about the animals and their environment accompanying each poem.
Snippet:
Dear Wandering Wildebeest
Wander with me,
meander with me.
Come, be my companion
in this wildebeest sea.
**Irene is one of my former students!**
This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up will be hosted by No Water River.
Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
A Pond Full of Ink
by Annie M. G. Schmidt (Author) and Sieb Posthuma (Illustrator)
Booktalk: A poetry collection with an inventive look at the world from the well-known Dutch author, Annie Schmidt. Translated by David Colmer
Snippet:
The Furniture
“Would you like to come out walking,” said the table to the chair.
“I’ve been standing here forever, and would like to take some air.”
“Now that you mention it, I’d love to come, the chair at once replied.
“Why, we both have legs beneath us that we’ve never even tried.”
This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up will be hosted by Author Amok.
Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
On Kiki’s Reef
by Carol L. Malnor (Author) and Trina L. Hunner (Illustrator)
Booktalk: A tiny baby sea turtle scrambles across the sandy beach and into the sea. Floating far out in the ocean, Kiki is becoming a gentle giant. She swims to shallower water where a rainbow of corals puts on a show. Kiki adopts the busy coral reef as her new home and discovers fish of all sizes and lots of surprises! (Each page had prose at the top and poetry at the bottom!)
Snippet: Surf and spray carry Kiki away.
She paddles wildly. The wide open ocean is a big place for a little turtle.
She searches for food and hides from big fish that would swallow her in one bite. Kiki is smart and brave.
Kiki paddles helter-skelter.
Beds of seaweed give her shelter.
This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up will be hosted by My Juicy Little Universe.
Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
When Thunder Comes: Poems for Civil Rights Leaders
by J. Patrick Lewis (Author), Jim Burke (Illustrator), R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator), Tonya Engel (Illustrator), John Parra (Illustrator), and Meilo So (Illustrator)
Booktalk: Children’s Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis gave new voices to seventeen heroes of civil rights: King, Harvey Milk, Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Sylvia Mendez, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mamie Carthan Till, Helen Zia, Josh Gibson, Dennis James Banks, Mitsuye Endo, Ellison Onizuka, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Yunus, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in this 2013 volume. After the book came out, Nelson Mandela died, so Lewis updated the poem. He asked me to share it with you today on Nelson Mandela International Day.
Nelson Mandela International Day
July 18
It was as if he’d landed on the moon
Five years before the actual event.
At Robben Island prison, his descent
Into a nightmare world, an outcast dune,
Began at forty-six, his fate derailed.
There were no clocks, his life defined by bell
And whistle, sisal mats (no beds), his cell
Seven feet square. But destiny prevailed,
So that for twenty-seven squalid years,
He kept his keepers, not the other way around:
The wages of nobility unbound.
Respect had overcome a freight of fears.
Madiba, as Mandela’s widely known—
The gentleman who calmed the combat zone.
J. Patrick Lewis
This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by The Opposite of Indifference.
Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
If It Rains Pancakes: Haiku and Lantern Poems (Poetry Adventures)
by Brian P. Cleary (Author) and Andy Rowland (Illustrator)
Booktalk: What is a haiku? It sounds like a sneeze. And isn’t a lantern a light source? Actually, they are two types of ancient Japanese poetry. See how each form works– and how these little poems can contain big surprises! (And when you’ve finished reading, you can try your hand at writing your own haiku and lanterns!) Here is a lantern poem…
Snippet:
Slush—
gulping
icy treat.
Getting brain freeze.
Whoa.
This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Buffy’s Blog.
Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Indivisible: Poems for Social Justice
by Gail Bush and Randy Meyer (Editors)
Booktalk: America is not easy. It’s a land of high ideals and stirring icons, but it is also a land of harsh realities. We celebrate the incredible achievements of individuals as we turn our gaze from hunger and homelessness in the streets. We have a difficult time matching our words with our deeds. This is where poetry comes in. A poem has the ability to personalize the ideal, to make it tangible in a way that a speech or news report cannot. It can widen the angle through which we view society. It can move us to action. The poems in this anthology do just that: confront, challenge, and inspire. They take us on a journey toward social justice, starting in the shadows and slowly working our way home.
Snippet:
The News You Don’t Get at Home
Luis J. Rodriguez
The news you don’t get at home
is in the dangling flesh pf peasants and workers,
in the silenced tongues of poets and journalists,
in the machine-gunned remains of women and children.
This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Check it Out.
Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Alphabet Trucks
by Samantha R. Vamos (Author) and Ryan O’Rourke (Illustrator)
Booktalk: Everyone’s heard of a tow truck. And a pickup truck. An ice-cream truck? Of course! But what about a quint truck? A lowboy truck? A knuckle-boom truck? Readers will learn about these kinds of trucks—and many more—while learning the alphabet!
Snippet:
Start the engines.
Lift and load.
Shift the gears and
hit the road.
Poetry Friday
This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Check it Out.
Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
Pretty, pretty, pictures
lined up in a row.
Click them one by one–
to each blog you will go.
Share your pretty pictures
and your poems with me.
We can make a new board
for everyone to see.
The last time I hosted Poetry Friday, I used a fancy form to display the roundup. This time I displayed the links on Pinterest. Enjoy!
Copyright © 2014 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.