Think Again is JonArno Lawson‘s latest book of poetry.   Published just this spring (2010) by Kids Can Press and illustrated by Julie Morstad, the book is a delightful exploration of the feelings of early adolescence — and indeed, of adults, as well!  The poems are short meditations written in pithy quatrains like this one called  “The Heart”:

Make sure that your heart
isn’t too well defended.
Your heart is designed
to be broken and mended.

Accompanying each poem is a lovely illustration by Morstad that gets at the ‘heart’, so to speak of the poem.  There are 61 poems altogether and one can easily read through the book in a short time, but the poems are of the kind that are worth revisiting.  They are loosely based on the feelings of  young lovers, sometimes towards or about each other;  at other times, the poems are just about the individuals themselves.  Though not quite as linguistically acrobatic as Lawson’s earlier book on lipograms, Think Again is nontheless a charming collection of poems that are witty and playful in their own way.

I have to quote the last poem in the book, “An Attempt at Description”, because it’s about tigers(!) and about what poets try to do with their words.

How to describe the natural world?
I think I know how to begin:
A tiger has terrible, beautiful eyes,
And the night has lovely skin.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this small taste of Lawson’s recent poetry and seek out your own copy of Think Again. It will be well worth it.

This week’s Poetry Friday host is Mary Ann at Great Kid Books.

A lipogram is a kind of constrained writing in which a particular letter, or groups of letters, are missing.  Imagine writing a paragraph, for example, excluding the letter ‘e.’   It’s tougher than you think, especially, if you decide to omit vowels — the linguistic glue, as it were — between the consonants.  In A Voweller’s Bestiary, author JonArno Lawson takes a unique stab at the lipogrammatic genre.  He has created an alphabet book of animals based on vowel combinations, rather than on the usual initial letter form.  The lipogram part comes in when he excludes certain vowels from each set.  Sound complicated?  Well, what’s a constraint (and possible consternation!) for the poet in terms of rules can be a delight to the ear and eye of the reader.  And that is how a Voweller’s Bestiary was received by my son, listening to the contorted word music of “Ants and Aardvarks” or “Jaguar, Tarantula, Tangalunga” or “Tortoise, Porpoise, Crocodile.”  Reading poetry can attune your child to the sounds of language and help them appreciate the elasticity of words.

Another poetry book I tried out on my younger child was Rascally Rhymes by Jordan Troutt, illustrated by Sarah Preston-Bloor.  This book, also an alphabet one, takes names and makes ‘rascally rhymes’ with them.  There’s Ian who eats “worms and toads/and rocks and snails/a la mode.” or Gillian who “stomps like a gorillian.”  After we finished reading this book, my daughter and I went through all the names and tried to see if we knew anyone with the same name.  That was fun!  Palimpsest Press, who publishes this book, is now offering a contest on their blog for children to makes rhymes.  Reading this book definitely had an effect on my daughter.  While sorting laundry together the other night, she held up a sock and said “Mom, this sock doesn’t have a rhyme!”

Being a poet and a parent, I’m cognizant of the way language works in books.  So on occasion, I like to read poetry to my children.  It’s the play with words that is what delights and amuses the childish imagination.  Take for example, the two books I’ll be reading to my children and reporting on for Books at Bedtime next week.  Rascally Rhymes by Jordan Troutt, illustrated by Sarah Preston-Bloor makes rhymes out of children’s names.  And The Voweller’s Bestiary by JonArno Lawson is an animal alphabet book of lipograms based on vowel combinations.  Stay tuned for more on the poetry beat on PaperTigers from me! And feel free to leave comments or make suggestions on poetry for children.