Marilyn Nelson and Jerry Pinkney’s Sweethearts of Rhythm

With a twilit velvet musky tone

as the pawnshop door is locked,

an ancient tenor saxophone

spins off a riff of talk.

“A thousand thousand gigs ago,

when I was just second-hand,”

it says, “I spent my glory years

on the road with an all-girl band.”

So begins Marilyn Nelson and Jerry Pinkney’s outstanding collaboration,  The Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story of the Greatest All-Girl Swing Band in the World.    Through the voices of the instruments, Nelson’s series of poems capture the story of this band as they performed throughout the United States in the 30s and 40s.  From fancy ballrooms to dusty picnics, these girl musicians were heard by a huge swath of the American population during a very challenging time period.  Nelson does a spectacular job with each separate poem slipping in historical facts about life in that time, the individual performer, the band, and the music.  Jim Crow, war and peace, pain and happiness, a myriad of fascinating details of 30s and 40s life suffuses these poems. And boy do they shine — bouncing, crooning, tootling, moaning, and blaring by way of those instrument storytellers.  Nelson respects her young audience, using big words and big ideas that swirl amidst sound, rhythm, pain, joy, and history in these captivating riffs of verse.

The poems would be fabulous enough, but add in Jerry Pinkney’s gorgeous illustrations and you have a truly remarkable work of art. Pinkney’s style will be familiar, but for the first time he has added collage to his work and it brings these images to a really heightened level, bright and brash like the music, quiet and sad like aspects of the life of the band members and their loved ones during this time.  Sweet.

This book has definitely joined my pile of favorites of the year.  It will be out in a few weeks — do look out for it!

A Glorious Day with Elizabeth Alexander

If the ground could speak what would the ground say?

It was while walking on the New Haven Green that poet Elizabeth Alexander began wondering about the Amistad captives who had been jailed there so many years ago.  A wondering that she eventually turned into an epic poem. A poem that helps us consider emotionally and intellectually something of that event, of its remarkable people.

Yesterday Elizabeth spent the day at my school.   And yes, it was glorious.

She began with our 4th graders — focusing on the Amistad section in America Sublime. Since the story of the Amistad (through the eyes of one of the children — Sarah Margru Kinson) has been the focus of my writing and teaching for many years, listening to Elizabeth speak about this epic poem and reading selections from it was just incredibly wonderful.  I loved the way she assumed the children could handle challenging language and ideas while also appreciating that they were children. She talked about the resilience of human beings and how she contemplated what it must have been like for the children on the journey to be in the presence of so much death — especially the death of those adults who had been caring for them. She spoke about filling the gaps in history, wondering how we will know what people were unable to tell us, and how empathy can help us.

Later she spoke to our 7th and 8th graders about the creative process, had lunch with faculty,  and ended the day at our biweekly 4th-6th grade assembly, focusing on her YA collaboration with Marilyn Nelson, Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color.

A chapbook of her inaugural poem was published yesterday and I was able to get the 4th grade team copies which Elizabeth graciously signed.  She would have been wonderful for us even if she had not done the poem, but she did and somehow she represented for us yesterday all the hope we are feeling these days with the Obama presidency.  Wondrous indeed.

My lovely 4th grade colleague Lesley Younge, Elizabeth and me.

Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color

Ashley Bryan

Ashley Bryan is the winner of the 2009 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award honoring an author or illustrator, published in the United States, whose books have made a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.

Ashley taught at my school long before I came, but continues to come for visits.  In fact, one year the third grade interviewed him and wrote his biography.  We got to know each other even better over the years when we together attended the annual CLNE summer institutes.  (The image above is from the one in 2006.)   Just last May I was at a CLNE colloquy and well recall standing around a bonfire being led by Ashley in poetry recitation.

This past Wednesday our school celebrated Ashley’s own telling of his story, Words to My Life’s Song.  A high school a capella group sang the three spirituals from Let It Shine, I presented my class’s reading of Beautiful Blackbird (you can hear a podcast of this here), and Ashley spoke and recited and led us as only he can.

We are all so lucky to know Ashley in person, through his books, and through his being.

Elizabeth Alexander’s Task

How to write a poem for a president

Elizabeth Alexander selected as the Inaugural Poet

I am so excited about this.  A few years ago we were fortunate enough to have the wonderful poet Natasha Trethewey at our school as a visiting scholar and she spent some time working with our fourth graders.  Because of our focus on the Amistad, rather than using her own poems,  Natasha introduced us to the Amistad poems of Elizabeth Alexander.  We loved them and have continued to use them ever since. Last year Elizabeth, with Marilyn Nelson, did the lovely children’s book, Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color,  And this year I arranged for her to come to our school to work directly with our students.  It so happens, just a couple of weeks after the inaugural.   Wow!

Five Poems by Nina Lindsay

Five lovely poems by Nina Lindsay are here: Mudlark Poster No. 77 (2008).  Nina was my Newbery chair, but is also a very accomplished poet.  Her first collection was Today’s Special Dish, published in 2007 by Sixteen Rivers Press. Recent poems of hers have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Columbia Poetry Journal, Fence, Shenandoah, and Northwest Review. She was a recipient of a 2007 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize.

A River of Words

A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams is a pitch-perfect picture-book biography.  Illustrator Melissa Sweet has visually captured the art of this spare yet gorgeous poet.  Author Jen Bryan simply yet eloquently presents William’s life in a way that is perfect for young readers.  Not just the typical picture book audience either. This is a book for anyone who loves Willams’ work, wants to see a fabulous illustrator at work. an elegant writer of biography for children, or just wants to learn about a remarkable American.

Poems of Childhood

The poetry of childhood is rarely simple; even an apparently straightforward poem of childhood memory, At the Sea-Side by Robert Louis Stevenson, has a deeper undercurrent running just below the surface. We are reminded that even children are subject to the tide that governs our affairs.

Poster poems: Childhood | Books | guardian.co.uk

J. Patrick Lewis’s The Innocent

The Innocent

Emmett Till

1941-1955

There on a Mississippi Delta day,
Young Emmett Till would fall so far from grace
That Justice hadn’t anything to say.

No, colored boys should never disobey.
He whistled at a white girl to her face
There on a Mississippi Delta day.

They kidnapped him, two good ol’ boys at play,
A warning to the bravest of his race
That Justice hasn’t anything to say.

They beat him bloody, oh, they made him pay.
They kicked him, shot, and drowned him just in case,
There on that Mississippi Delta day.

Beware self-righteous predators who prey;
They make convenient evil commonplace
When Justice hasn’t anything to say.

The killers were acquitted, by the way,
A verdict Southern virtue would embrace
There on a Mississippi Delta day
When Justice hadn’t anything to say.

Three Poems from J. Patrick Lewis

These three surprises came the other day from poet J. Patrick Lewis. What a lovely unexpected treat! Thanks so much, Pat!

July 10, 2008
For Monica

Road Block

I saw a bookworm in a book.
The bookworm said to me,

“Long have I lived these many years
On page 6, paragraph 3.”

I said, “Why don’t you move along?
There’s so much more ahead.”

“The author mistook its for it’s-
That’s where I stopped,” she said.

* *

Books Discover Children

Yes, children do discover books,
But books find children on their own,
And then can’t wait to get their hooks
In kids who think they’re all alone.

For instance, GOODNIGHT MOON knows why
That girl is thinking to herself,
How can I ever say good-bye….
When Rabbit pulls her to the shelf.

And FROG AND TOAD hops to the child
Who almost lost his closest friend:
The only way pain’s reconciled
Is by the letter that you send.

When CHARLOTTE’S WEB bumps into you-
A girl who’s fastened to a farm-
The simple life you thought you knew
Is spelled out in a spider’s charm.

As children hurry to the page,
The picture page talks back by turns,
Capturing kids of every age
For whom imagination burns.

* *

Library Lady

If you’re looking for good fiction,
Welcome to my jurisdiction!
I’m the Dewey Decimal Guard,
Who can find the perfect story,
Humor (witty), horror (gory),
Novels (great), adventure (glory)….
Let me see your library card.

No, there’s nothing’s more exciting
For a kid who’s reading writing
Than to fricassee a mind,
‘Cause a book is like an oven-
What it’s cookin’ is book lovin’.
Set the temperature then shove in
Every brain cell you can find.

* *