Hello and welcome to this week’s Poetry Friday.  I will update this post with your posts throughout the day – in the meantime, please leave your links in the Comments below.

In honor of the mosaic of poetry that will make up the wonderful whole as created each week for Poetry Friday, I thought I’d highlight Jorge Luján’s gorgeous poem-turned-picture-book Sky Blue Accident/Accidente Celeste - beautifully translated by Elisa Amado and illustrated by Piet Grobler (Groundwood Books, 2007) (and the “beautifully” refers to both the translation and the illustrations, by the way).

Before the poem starts, two double-page spreads show a small boy cycling to school, at first concentrating hard on the task in hand and then being distracted by a bird in the sky…  And so:

Una mañana de brumas
me tropecé con el cielo
y a los pedazos caídos
los escondí e mi bolsillo.

Once on a misty morning
I crashed into the sky,
Then hid its broken pieces
In my pocket.

What follows is a joyous flight of imagination, as the child tries to show the pieces of sky to his teacher; and then all the children try and repair the hole in the sky by painting a new one, to get things back to normal (for without a complete sky “Lost clouds stumbled around/bumbling into corners,” – isn’t that a beautiful image? – and the moon is also behaving oddly…).  The boy then uses the fragments of the “real” sky to fill in the last remaining gaps.

The poem is a delight and Piet Grobler’s gorgeous illustrations are very clever as well as a joy to the eye – for they combine the flight of imagination in the poem (including a teacher who grows wings and flies out the window) with a school setting that has the boy drawing on his lined exercise paper; and there are also certain visual motifs that the reader catches up with eventually. You can see some pages from the Spanish edition on Jorge’s website.

So now we will see what kind of sky Poetry Friday brings us this week. Will it be cloudy, gray or blue – or maybe sparkly or rosy or velvet?  I can’t wait to find out… and if you have a moment on your hands while you’re here wondering too, do pause and watch this video of Jorge’s poem Tarde de Invierno/Winter Afternoon, illustrated my Mandana Sadat, and like Sky Blue Accident, beautifully translated by Elisa Amado and published by Groundwood Books (2006).  It’s still my favourite book video ever…

April at Teaching Authors is highlighting a book giveaway and interview with paranormal verse novel writer Carolee Dean, just in time for Halloween! Carolee shares a writing exercise and a poem from her spooky new verse novel, out on Oct. 2nd.

Renee features W B Yeats’ beautiful poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” at No Water River and, wait for it, has an interview withe the man himself!

Tabatha shares her own witty poem “What Changes?” ready for tomorrow’s  100,000 Poets for Change at Tabatha Yeatts: The Opposite of Indifference.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm has a real treat in store, with her own poem (and sketch), “Leaf Planes” – and some visiting poets from Mrs Luft’s second grade class.

Laura Shoven at Author Amok is also getting ready for 100,000 Poets for Change and will be at tomorrow’s Baltimore Book Festival presenting a tribute to Lucille Clifton, who died in 2010.  “Clifton is a well-known poet, but most readers don’t realize that she was also a prolific children’s author.”  In her post today, Laura has an interview with Lucille’s daughter Alexia about her mother’s picture books.

Liz Steinglass at Growing Wild provides a splash of sunshine with her poem “Black-Eyed Susans”.

What does the National Geographic’s new anthology of animal poetry edited by J. Patrick Lewis have to do with buckeye candy?  Find out at NC Teacher Stuff where Jeff will reveal all…

… and Mary Lee is “on the same page” over at A Year of Reading – she has a proposal for the Book of Animal Poetry in light of 100,000 Poets for Change.

Tara at A Teaching Life has a poem “about finding happiness, however elusive it may be” – “Happiness” by Jane Kenyon.

Joanna continues her haiku series on endangered species with S-U today, over at Miss Marple’s Musings.  And if you haven’t seen A-R yet, I warn you, you’ll find yourself thoroughly distracted from doing anything else until you’ve caught up!

Robyn Hood Black says “”Hello to Fall with a few [beautiful] lines from Longfellow”

Diane Mayr offers her customary triple treat: “Dawn Revisited” by Rita Dove at Random Noodling; “a brand new book by Douglas Florian” (prepare to have your timber shivered) at Kurious Kitty; and she also quotes Florian at KK’s Kwotes.

Diane also asks if we are ready for some moon dancing – they certainly are at The Write Sister.

At Poetry for Kids Joy, Joy Acey introduces us to a work-in-progress that is definitely one to follow – a list poem introduction to children in each US state – Joy asks for suggestions and offers ideas for creating list poems in class.

Irene Latham contemplates journeys via “The Journey” by Mary Oliver at Live Your Poem – and I love the way she expresses it as “thinking about the journey, not just as writer, but as a human finding one’s voice”.

Jama has a delectable post over at Alphabet Soup,”a three-course meal” focusing on the wonderful “Poetry Friday Anthology” compiled by Poetry Friday’s very own (am I allowed to make that proprietorial kind of claim?!) Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong.   And she sends out birthday wishes to Janet for Sunday with one of her special trade-mark photographs.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JANET!

Linda Baie at Teacher Dance has written a moving poem for 100,000 Poets for Change, reflecting on war and the soldiers who serve, and their families who wait at home.

David Harrison sends out a call to all poets regarding a new feature on his blog: “Each Sunday I now showcase poems by other poets who e-mail their work to me by the Friday before. It’s an easy way to share the stage, and comments from readers have shown this to be a welcome opportunity. You’re all encouraged to check it out and consider joining the fun. If you send a poem, don’t forget to include any links you’d like to have posted with your work.”

David also introduces what he hopes will become another regular feature on his blog: Caption the Cartoon, with an especially created cartoon by Rob Shepperson.  Have a go!

And one more from David: his poem “What was That” from his anthology Goose Lake – and it also appears in the above-mentioned-and-acclaimed National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry edited by J. Patrick Lewis.

Jane Kenyon makes another appearance, thanks to Karen Edminston.

Doraine Bennett contemplates moments in the company of Margaret Atwood at Dori Reads.

Ben from The Small Nouns has lots of ideas for using persona poems in the classroom and highlights Nikki Giovanni’s “Quilts” as a mentor poem to inspire.

Matt Forrest Esenwine presents “something… a bit different” at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme – he sure does!

Donna shares an encounter between “Dog and Toad” at Mainely Write.

Sylvia Vardell takes us into pet poems for Week 5 of The Poetry Friday Anthology, with Jeannine Atkins’ “Good Dog! Bad Dog!”…

…and on her own Poetry for Children, Sylvia has a wonderful, in-depth post “about J. Patrick Lewis, his work, and a recent interview with him published in the September issue of Book Links” – including a couple of extra questions not found in the magazine.  A definite must-read!

At Check it Out, Jone highlights this year’s Poetry CYBILS panelists and reminds us to start getting our nominations in from 1st October – that’s Monday, folks!

Samuel Kent at i.droo.it has lots of witty poems for us to enjoy this week: “So Long Summertime” – a euphonious poem about the coming of fall; “Leaves” – wherein fall is fun for everyone but the trees; “I’m being chased by monkeys“– a problem for those bringing bananas to the zoo; “Flea Written” – where I consider the lacking literary skill of insects (and discuss rhyme scheme); and
“Roly Poly Goalie” – where a Hippo is clearly cheating.

Anastasia Suen points to Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall over at Booktalking.

Catherine Johnson has a “fruity poem” – a wonderfully imaginative take on fallen fruit.

Violet Nesdoly‘s poem today is “a little one about autumn called ‘Shutting Down.’” – a gem, accompanied by a gorgeous photo.

At There Is No Such Thing as a God-forsaken Town Ruth shares a powerful and moving poem written by her friend Magalie Boyer following the Haitian earthquake.

Andromeda Jazmon shares Yusef Komunyakaa’ s intriguing ”The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott’s Collected Poems”  at A Wrung Sponge.

Charles Ghigna takes us on a walk through “The Silent Forest” at Father Goose.

At Wild Rose Reader Elaine Magliaro shares some special moments withe her grand-daughter that inspired her “original mask poem titled ‘Busybody’ about a squirrel scavenging for food in autumn”.

Kort muses on “Antilamentation” by Dorianne Laux at One Deep Drawer.

Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect highlights a powerful poem on the theme of fairy-tales – “Reading the Brothers Grimm to Jenny” by Lisel Mueller.

In honor of Saturday’s KidLitCon gathering in New York, Mary Ann Scheuer turns the pages of the “wonderful” A Poem as Big as New York at Great Kids Books.

A close encounter with a dragon awaits you at On Point where Lorie Ann Glover has an original haiku…

… Meanwhile, at readertotz, Lorie Ann catches something new to me by the toe in “Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo”.

Join the feast at Gathering Books where Fats Suela has selected two poems that put poetry itself on the menu.

At The Drift Record, Julie Larios considers whether “whether a drawing (by the Maine artist John Whalley) can be a ‘poem’” – what do you think?

Betsy has an original poem “Fall Morning” at Teaching Young Writers, inspired by her morning commute to work.

At Mrs. Merrill’s Book Break, Amy is “celebrating libraries in honor of Library Card Sign Up Month . . . what better way to celebrate than to share poems about libraries”

Wow, what a rich round-up this Poetry Friday has gathered in.  Thank you, everybody; I’ve enjoyed reading all your posts and meeting some new blogs too.

It’s after midnight so here are some pictures from morning and evening Day 1 – I’ll add the captions anon – in the meantime, do you know who’s who?

For our current issue on How Children Play Around the World, we asked several authors and illustrators to tell us about their Memories of Playtimes Past. Together, they paint a vivid picture of childhood around the world and reveal the power of imagination – something that still plays such an important role in all their lives as adults, and in the lives of kids today. Illustrator Mandana Sadat, whose own contribution is just wonderful, was struck after reading the whole article by the similarities in the different experiences of play – do read Aline’s post discussing this.

The first author up is Tanita Davis:

Growing up the youngest of three sisters (in Martinez, California) meant being left out of the older girls’ games. To placate me, I was named Mom’s “helper” and my playtimes combined chores and daydreaming. I would sit on the back porch and shuck corn from the garden, or weed the front yard – and then taking the silk from the corn, combine it with dirt and water, and make “pies” for the dog to eat (Our poor dog. She really did eat them.), or take the “milk” from the stems of the dandelions I was supposed to be eradicating from the front yard (after blowing all of the milkweed clocks and sufficiently re-seeding them throughout the lawn), and use it as glue to adhere dry weeds to the “head” of a cornhusk doll.

Because I was a quiet kid, I got away with a lot – climbing the tree next to my father’s shed, and making a tree-house of sorts on the roof, complete with its own chamber pot (Oh, I got in trouble when my mother found out about THAT) and store of slightly mildew books scavenged from a teacher’s throw-away pile. One summer I played with the hose and made carefully dried adobe “moccasins” that were no more than ten or twelve layers of clay mud I wore on the bottom of my feet as shoes. They lasted for a surprisingly long time before they cracked. As the layers dried, I would lie on my back in the yard and listen to the drone of the planes going to and from the Air Force base, and imagine they were taking people to adventures, just like I would have someday.

And Belle Yang brings the article to a flourishing close:

I was born on the subtropical island of Taiwan. The front yard was the rice paddies, alive with tadpoles like music notes on sheet music. The Sleeping Dragon Mountain, exploding with firecracker red azaleas, was my backyard. Rivulets, home to small fish and crustaceans, came rushing down the hills. My barefoot friends and I looked for tiny crabs as they crawled among the stones, dappled by sunlight and the motion of wind in the acacia.

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We caught the crabs and tied white sewing thread to one of their many legs. We took them for walks on the paved paths of the schoolyard, where my parents taught high school. I was delighted with my pet that could only walk sideways.

Do read the rest of the Memories of Playtimes Past – between them, Alan Gratz, Mandana Sadat, Jorge Argueta, Neni Sta Romana Cruz, Chris Cheng, Demi and Larry Loyie, along with Tanita and Belle quoted above, will evoke a smile, or even a laugh out loud – and certainly memories of one’s own childhood… And if you’d care to share some of those with us, we’d love to hear them!

A couple of days ago I received the following note from author/illustrator Mandana Sadat, who contributed to the group feature Memories of Playtimes Past, currently featured on our website:

I found it interesting and surprising to see that so many people seemed to have very similar experiences of play. Do you think this is because you asked children’s and young adult book authors and illustrators, who, in spite of being from different cultures, may have similar kinds of sensibilities? Or are these experiences truly universal? I wonder what would have happened if you had asked doctors or teachers, for instance. Would they have similar stories to share, or something totally different?

I think this is a very good question, and I extend it to all teachers, engineers, scientists, technicians, craftsmen, etc out there. We would love to hear your thoughts. And while we wait for your feedback, I’ll venture an answer.

I do think the impulse to play creatively and to push the boundaries of reality is universal, and that the similarities between people’s experiences of free play and of spending time in the outdoors tells us that the excitement of playing in a tree house or of going on an imaginary adventure, for instance, knows no cultural, language or geographical boundaries. For the feature “Memories of Playtimes Past”, we specifically asked people to write about their experiences of unstructured play. Would we have gotten a different response had we asked about the organized games they played? Probably so.

As Anna Weistein says on her article Outdoor Summer Play, when children play outdoors they can “talk louder, run faster, jump higher, and get dirtier”. The organized games we played as children may have had different names, objectives, rules, but I believe that the nature of the creative play we all experienced is indeed very similar, and the source of a good portion of our happy, lasting memories. I also believe that the development of loving, creative individuals, capable of empathy, of working together and acting from strong-hearted convictions, whatever their profession, is directly related to their experiences of play as children. But that’s just me… I’d be very interested in hearing what others think.

For those joining now, this conversation on the ways children play started here.

Well, the Bologna Book Fair has been and gone for another year and once again it passed in a whirlwind of activity. Between an action-packed schedule and internet connection frustrations, we didn’t manage to post quite as often during the Fair as we had hoped, but now we’re back at our desks, we will be presenting various highlights over the coming weeks. So here are some special moments from the first day:

“A Morning of Korean Picture Books Showcasing Family.” The photo shows picture-book writer/illustrator Cho Hae-ran’s brushes and paints, and some of the exquisite little books produced by children she has worked with. I’ll be writing about this whole session properly soon…

The announcements of IBBY’s Awards – see Corinne’s post…

A Q&A session with Shaun Tan and publishing consultant Helen Chamberlain in the illustrators’ café – we’ll definitely have more about that soon too.

The opening of the Poemas de Compañía exhibition, featuring Isol’s illustrations for Pantuflas de perrito, poems by Jorge Luján about pets, based on some workshops he did with children. It was great to see Jorge and a delight to meet Mandana Sadat, illustrator of another of Jorge’s books, Winter Afternoon, a favorite of mine, as well as Jorge’s Spanish and Italian publishers – not to mention the Principessa dei Gelati!

You can see more photos from Day 1 here.

An event on the first morning of the Bologna Book Fair set the tone for Aline’s and my enjoyment of the whole experience, when we heard British poet Michael Rosen and Argentine-Mexican poet Jorge Luján taking part in a packed-out seminar about “Poetry in Children’s Books”.

Michael Rosen started his presentation with an interactive recitation of his poem “This is the Hand” (here’s a link to it but “slip” in the 3rd stanza should read “slid”!), and then went on to talk about how he became a poet, almost despite the way poetry had been taught in schools when he was a boy (1950’s England: “we like poems where nothing happens and people are a little bit sad and don’t know why”!)…

As well as being a very entertaining speaker, who also charmed his audience with a poem he had written the day before about his day in Bologna, he had some very salient points to make about why it is so important to include poetry in the school curriculum. He compared reading a poem to looking at a photograph in an album: it freezes time for a moment and “you can put it up in front of you and can look at it again and again”. He pointed out that this kind of contemplation and reflection are very important for children and that in education there are not many opportunities to do this without having an answer to all the questions. Poetry provides a different way of investigating reality – through suggestion or illustration perhaps – which reverberates in people’s minds and opens the way to a different sort of dialogue. “Stories usually have to conclude; poems can end with a question.”

Jorge Luján began (more…)

Cloudscome at A Wrung Sponge is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday – and in her post she suggests putting poems out into the “face-to-face world” as well as through blogging… hmm, now there’s an idea…

Nights are drawing in here in the UK, as we move towards wintertime but in the southern hemisphere, the world is heading into summer: so here are two beautiful picture-books which each contain a poem – one for winter and one for summer. One thing is certain: reading time will feel warm, whichever one you read; and they are such a visual treat too, that really they have to be a face-to face encounter.

The first is Jorge Luján’s poem Tarde de Invierno, translated into English as Winter Afternoon by Elisa Amado and empathetically illustrated by Mandana Sadat. It’s a short poem about a child looking out into the winter’s evening, waiting for her mother to come home: and when she does, the hug fits perfectly into the “vidrio del portarretrato”/ “the frosty frame” – so that the focus suddenly swings round and the little girl, the observer, is now the observed. And what a beautiful picture it is too. My children like this poem because it’s full of love. I like it , yes, for that reason too: but also because it helps to assuage some of the inevitable guilt of being a working mother…

The other poem transports us to the heat of the Australian Outback. Annaliese Porter was only eight years old when she wrote the poem – so this would also be a great classroom resource for raising aspiration. Here’s a small taste:

On Uluru there are many shades
on the rocky eye –
browns and reds mingling
into a rich earthy dye.

Uluru is immediately recognisable in Bronwyn Bancroft‘s glorious depiction – and indeed her illustrations sizzle all the way through the book.