Our selection last month once again had us travelling all over the world and this time included poetry, fiction and non-fiction.

First of all, in honor of Poetry Month in the US, we chose Linda Sue Park’s Tap Dancing on the Roof as our reading-together book. We’ve all had great fun dipping into it and taking it in turns to choose and read the poems to each other. There were some gem moments like Older Brother discovering the sijo about how annoying it is to be summoned out of bed to go and clean your teeth – minutes after being subjected to the same treatment himself! The more we explored the poems, the more I marvelled at Linda Sue’s knack for getting the words just right – whether she’s describing a very ordinary, every day event or taking off on a flight of whimsy and metaphor. I’ve already blogged about Tap Dancing on the Roof so I won’t say any more here, but pass on to…

… Older Brother’s choice, which was Grandpa Chatterji by Jamila Gavin, illustrated by Peter Bailey. Here’s what he (aged 9 1/2) has to say:

I really enjoyed Grandpa Chatterji and I thought it was very funny sometimes, especially the part at the fair when Grandpa and Sanjay went on the rockets and they flew up into the air – when they came off they were green! Then in the evening Sanjay said, “Shall we have another go next time?” and Grandpa replied, “Maybe.”

I learned that in India some people pray standing on one foot and then when they pray they say, “Om” and the O is like the shape of the sun. People think of God as the sun because he is bright and the light of the world.

I would recommend reading it because I think people would enjoy it. Now I want to read the other two Grandpa Chatterji books.

In the meantime, Little Brother has enjoyed dipping into and absorbing the Australian Creatures of the Rainforest:Two artists explore Djabugay country by Warren Brim and Anna Eglitis:

I love books, especially encyclopaedia books about animals. This book has some animals in that I love, like echidnas and kookaburras and bandicoots. I learned that some ants are edible (the green ants) and I learned some words in Djabugay like gurrina, which means echidna, and badil, which is a zamia palm tree. Luckily at the end there is a guide to how you say their letters.

The book is by two artists – first there are lino cuts then there are original aboriginal pictures. It is very good.

So, as you can see, we are very much enjoying the PaperTigers Reading Challenge and I know my boys are finding the books they’ve chosen to be fun and enriching. Do let us know how you are getting on – only a couple more months to go!

I have to admit, I had never heard of sijo, a traditional Korean verse form, until we received a review copy of Linda Sue Park’s gorgeous little book Tap Dancing on the Roof. What a wonderful partnership the poems and Istvan Banyai’s adorably quirky illustrations make!

A sijo is typically divided into three lines of fourteen to sixteen syllables each – though apparently in English they are sometimes divided up into six lines. Unlike their sister genre, the haiku, they can be about anything and they usually have a twist/ joke at the end. It is amazing how much can be conveyed in those few, succinct sound bites! With poems like these, there’s no excuse for missing out on that bedtime story. A beginning, a middle and an end are conjured up in less than a minute.

I would love to quote some of these sijo here at length but obviously that is not possible for copyright reasons. I will content myself with this tantalising beginning of the last gem in the book entitled “Wish”:

For someone to read a poem
again, and again, and then,

Now you must all rush out and buy/ pester your libraries to get hold of a copy so you can find out the rest of it – and read the others – both for yourselves and with the young people in your lives.

I know I’m slightly behind the times on this – several blogs have already waved the flag, including A Year of Reading, PACL Kids and Three Silly Chicks – I do like their conclusion that

It’s the book equivalent of a hot fudge sundae with a cherry on top.

Hmm. I’m sure there’s a sijo in there somewhere! Anyway, it’s definitely one of those books worth making a noise about – with or without the dancing shoes.

We are including Tap Dancing on the Roof in our choices for the PaperTigers Reading Challenge (have you made your mind up yet?). I can’t wait to see if my boys will start writing some sijo of their own. And if you do, please do add them on here so we can all read them.

Mentor Texts, Read Alouds and More is the gathering place for this week’s Poetry Friday… see you there!

Today’s bits may not be news for some of you anymore, but here they go, in true December-mode (i.e. scrambling to get things done and running behind on almost everything there’s to run behind on):

Lights have shined on Kashmira Sheth‘s Keeping Corner, which got a starred review from Kirkus, and Linda Sue Park’s Tap Dancing on The Roof: Sijo Poems, which made the Hornbook Fanfare list in the Poetry category. In this year’s Fanfare we find Tap Dancing on the Roof in the very good company of the likes of National Book Award winner The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (YA fiction) and The Arrival (Picture Book), to mention just two of the many great books that made the prestigious list.

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On a “coming up soon” note, Mitali Perkin’s First Daughter: White House Rules, the follow-up novel to First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover is coming out in Jan 24 from Dutton/Penguin. Hurray for Sameera! It will be nice to catch up with her, as she continues to learn to march to the beat of her own drum. A review will be posted to the PaperTigers website soon (and, no, Mitali, the fact that we haven’t reviewed it yet is not a matter of sequel review syndrome, but most likely of “end of the year chaos” syndrome!)

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And last but not least on today’s set of “sparklers”… Happy second anniversary to Jen Robinson’s Book Page! May her blog continue to inform and enlighten us all for many years to come!