POETRY FRIDAY: Summersaults and Lemonade Sun

School will soon be out. The summer solstice is just around the corner. Hotter days will arrive along with the sounds of children playing outdoors on weekday mornings. I can still remember vividly many of the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and activities of summer from my childhood:

Watching fireworks exploding into color in the night sky and hearing their loud crackles and booms on the Fourth of July

Eating slices of succulent watermelon, juice dribbling down my chin, and spitting out the slick black seeds onto the sidewalk

Listening to the sound of cicadas in the heat of a summer day and the song of crickets at night

Slurping up raspberry lime rickeys and chocolate ice cream sodas

Running through the sprinkler, my bare feet squishing through wet grass

Picking feather-topped carrots, glossy-skinned peppers, scallions, and ripe tomatoes from my grandparents’ garden

The smell of hamburgers and hot dogs being cooked on an outdoor grill

The banging of my kitchen screen door as I ran outside to play

The tart, refreshing taste of my mother’s homemade lemonade

Feeling the cool wet sand beneath my feet at the seashore

Playing hide-and-go-seek with my cousins and friends on a balmy summer evening


With these images in mind, I thought this would be a good time to write poems about summer. Wouldn’t this also be the perfect time for children to write summertime poems? I think it would be a wonderful and enjoyable final writing exercise for the school year.

Well, here are two fine collections of poems to get kids thinking “poetically” about the warmest season of the year.

SUMMERSAULTS
Written & illustrated by Douglas Florian
Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 2002

Most kids love the poetry of Douglas Florian. I know my students did! SUMMERSAULTS contains twenty-eight lighthearted verses about such topics as fireflies, dandelions, swinging on a swing, bees, jumping rope, grazing cows, and baseball. The poems are rhythmic and rhyming and lots of fun to read aloud.

SUMMERSAULTS includes several excellent examples of list poems: What I Love about Summer, What I Hate about Summer, Greenager, Some Summers, No Fly Zone, Names of Clouds, Lost and Found, The Sea, and Dog Day. These poems could be used to inspire your students to write their own list poems about the different sights, sounds, smells, tastes, weather, and activities of summer. A teacher could brainstorm with her kids about all the things that come to mind when they think of summertime and school vacation. The teacher could write her kids’ contributions down on chart paper, guide the class in writing a class list poem about summer, and then ask them to write their own individual poems.


Here are excerpts from some of Douglas Florian’s list poems in SUMMERSAULTS.

From What I Love about Summer

Morning glories
Campfire stories
Picking cherries
And blueberries…

Skipping stones
Ice cream cones
Double plays
And barefoot days.


From What I Hate about Summer

Skinned knees
Ninety degrees…

Humid nights
Mosquito bites
Clothes that stick—
I hate that summer goes too quick.


From Lost and Found

Along the shore
I found six shells:
Two gray,
One white,
Three caramel…

Five feathers from
A seabird’s wings.
I wonder: Who
Has lost these things?


As a teacher, I believed it was always best to read the poetry of more than one poet to my students before asking them to write their own poems on a particular topic. Another collection of poems that would be great to share with kids prior to having them write their own summer poems is Rebecca Kai Dotlich’s LEMONADE SUN.

LEMONADE SUN AND OTHER SUMMER POEMS
Written by Rebecca Kai Dotlich
Illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist
Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, 1998

Dotlich’s writing style is different from that of Florian’s. While most of her poems celebrating summer are rhythmic and rhyming, they contain more imagery and figurative language. Let me provide you with some examples from her poems. She refers to jacks as tin bouquets/small bundles of piggyback stars. In Sunflowers, she compares the flowers to Golden guards/saluting/sky/garden kings/with chocolate eyes. In Dragonfly, she calls the insect a sky-ballerina/this glimmering jewel…with wings that you/could whisper through. In Backyard Bubbles, one of the loveliest poems in the collection, she compares a bubble to One fragile globe/of soapy skin/a glimmering/of breath within/a perfect pearl. Later in the poem she writes about another bubble that dances on a summer sigh/shimmering with shades of sky.

Dotlich includes other poems about lemonade, a lemonade stand, bumblebees, playing marbles, dandelions, pinwheels, jumping rope, going barefoot, jellyfish, a firefly, and fireworks. The poetry in this book definitely takes me back to the summer days of my childhood

Here are two poems from LEMONADE SUN

LEMONADE SUN

Popsicle stains.
Fudgesicle fun.
Strawberry sizzle—
Lemonade sun.


I will leave you with Dotlich’s poem SUMMER GREETINGS.

Today’s the day
that summer comes.
Good-bye to cold;
hello to sun!
Hello to rose
and vines of green,
to lettuce leaves—
oh, hello beans!
Today’s the day
for climbing trees,
for jumping rope
and skinning knees,
for swinging high
and skipping fast,
and reading
books
outside
at last.

May we all have fun reading outside in summer!

Note: I would like to thank Rebecca Kai Dotlich for giving me permission to print the full text of two of her poems in my Poetry Friday post.

Poetry Friday: Interview with Douglas Florian, Part 2

Douglas Florian was kind enough to grant me a second interview. You can read my first interview with Douglas here. And let me say, once again, I am a huge fan of his poetry books for children!

Elaine: I read in a BookPage interview that you were inspired to write your first collection of children’s poetry after you picked up a copy of Oh, That's Ridiculous!, an anthology of humorous poems that was edited by William Cole. Can you tell us what it was about that book that gave you inspiration? Can you also give us some information about your first foray into children’s poetry?

Douglas: Oh, That's Ridiculous! was basically a very funny book, with poems from a wide variety of poets and time periods, including some of the first poems of Shel Silverstein. The irreverent drawings of Swiss artist Tomi Ungerer were amazing, and the design format was to have many poems with black ink drawings.

Elaine: Your series of books of animal poems has been very popular. Can you tell us what gave you the idea for Beast Feast, the first book in the series?

Douglas: I always felt that animals are a "natural" not only for poetry but visually as well. And they're great fun to research!

Elaine: Do you do much research before you begin one of your collections of animal poems?

Douglas: I do enjoy going to the Bronx Zoo, American Museum of Natural History, or reading books and articles about animals. And I always interview my backyard menagerie.

Elaine: You employ clever wordplay, puns, and pithy endings in many of your poems. You also coin new words like Saturning, super-dupiter, walrusty, and porcuskin. Much of your poetry is humorous. One would assume you enjoy having fun with words and making your readers laugh. Are you a funny person?

Douglas: I am occasionally a punny, I mean funny, person, but I'd rather be more funny in print than in person. Prince Charles of England once said, "The Americans are inventing too many new words," but I'm sorry, Charlie, it's great fun to do that.

Elaine: In addition to narrative and lyric poems, you write mask poems, poems of address, and concrete poems. You are also a master of rhythm and rhyme and the use of repetition in your poetry. How did you learn so much about the genre?

Douglas: I immersed myself in verse before writing beast feast, reading poetry from different times, cultures, forms, and mentalities. I am especially big on "pithy" poems, and sometimes wear a pith helmet to facilitate that.

Elaine: Do you read children’s poetry? If so, do you have any favorite children’s poets or favorite books of poetry?

Douglas: My favorite children's poet, by near and far, is Ogden Nash, although almost all of his animal poems follow the AABB rhyme scheme. His poems are sometimes misprinted. To see what I mean, just google: Ogden Nash the Kitten .

Elaine: Do you have any favorite adult poets?

Douglas: I've always loved the beat poets, especially Allen Ginsberg. In college I spent an entire term studying Milton's Paradise Lost, but it was lost on me.

Elaine: Which of all your collections has been your most successful or best-selling book to date?
Douglas: Insectlopedia was the number two pestseller, I mean bestseller, of children's books, thanks, in part, to Daniel Pinkwater's reading it with Scott Simon on NPR one Saturday. It's still selling well. I guess it has "legs" so to speak.

Elaine: Do you have a favorite among all the poetry books you have written?

Douglas: My favorite is:
beastfeastintheswiminsectlopediamammalabilializardsfrogsandpolliwogsbowwowmeowmeowbingbangboinblaugheteriazoo'swhoand comets,stars,themoon,andmars. I love them all.
For the art my favorite is comets, stars, the moon, and mars.

Elaine: Now that you have completed your fine series of seasonal poetry, published nine books of animal poems, and written a collection of space poems—what can we expect from you next? Are you working on a new collection that you would like to tell us about?

Douglas: I am totally obsessed with dinosaurs, in fact, I am thinking about changing my first name to Douglasaurus.

And there you have it readers—my second interview with Douglas Florian, a funny—and punny—man…and certainly one of the most talented illustrators and poets creating books for children today.

Note: I own and enjoy all of Douglas Florian’s poetry collections. My particular favorite is Insectlopedia. I absolutely LOVE that book!!! But I also love Winter Eyes, and Lizards, Frogs, and Polliwogs, and In the Swim, and On the Wing, and Summersaults, and Mammalabilia, and on and on and on.

I want to thank Douglas Florian for granting me this second interview for Wild Rose Reader. Douglas, I look forward to your next poetry collection!

Happy Poetry Friday!

Interview with Douglas Florian

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from Douglas Florian last month thanking me for supporting his new book COMETS, STARS, THE MOON, AND MARS…and telling me he liked the Pluto poem I posted at Blue Rose Girls! He may not know this, but his compliment meant a lot to me. You see…I’m a big fan of Douglas Florian’s poetry. I own all of his poetry collections—I even own two copies of some of them!!!

I wrote back to Douglas Florian and asked if he would like to be interviewed for Wild Rose Reader. Need I tell you that I was elated when he answered in the affirmative?


ABOUT THE POETRY OF DOUGLAS FLORIAN

I used to share Douglas Florian’s poetry with my second grade students all the time—and later with students in my elementary school library. They enjoyed his poetry as much as I did. Florian is truly one of my favorite poets. His humorous, rhyming poetry is in a class by itself. I will admit that I find some of the light, humorous verse written for children today mildly amusing at best. It just doesn’t sing to me, doesn’t make me laugh, doesn’t beg to be read over and over again, doesn’t surprise with puns, clever wordplay, or pithy endings like the poetry of Douglas Florian. His poems frolic on the page hand in hand with his colorful and energetic art.


PROLOGUE

I interviewed Douglas Florian about his latest collection of space poems. You can read my review of COMETS, STARS, THE MOON, AND MARS at Blue Rose Girls. I also posted an additional article—Update: Comets, Stars, the Moon and Mars…and Pluto. That’s where Douglas read my Pluto poem.

THE INTERVIEW

Elaine: Douglas, you are probably most well known for your collections of animal poems, including BEAST FEAST, MAMMALABILIA, and my particular favorite INSECTLOPEDIA. Your four books of seasonal poems, WINTER EYES, SUMMERSAULTS, AUTUMNBLINGS, and HANDSPRINGS have also been very popular. Can you tell us what inspired you to write a collection of poems about space?

Douglas: The book was inspired by a visit to a school on Long Island. With an hour of time to kill I left the windowless gym where I was presenting, to wander the halls. I came upon a charming exhibit of art about the planets done by what looked to be first graders. It was so charming and fresh that I decided to do a book about space.

Elaine: Once you got the inspiration to write a book of space poems, how did you approach the project? Did you start with research, with your poems, or with your paintings?

Douglas: Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars began with much research. I visited the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History. I took out many space books from the library and purchased several source volumes including The Compact NASA Atlas of the Solar System and The National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Night Sky. I also looked at several web sites online. When I found contradictory information online I usually turned to NASA's detailed authoritative site.

Elaine: Did you know much about astronomy before you began work on Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars?

Douglas: When I was young I was more interested in science fiction about space than the actual science. I enjoyed reading such authors as Isaac Asimov, the author of Foundation and Ray Bradbury, who wrote The Martian Chronicles. I even subscribed to the magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction as a pre-teen. As an adult most of my knowledge came from such popular books as Carl Sagan's Cosmos. I did study astronomy very briefly in a Queens College physics course, but found far too much math involved.

Elaine: How long did the entire process of research, writing, and painting the illustrations for the book take you?

Douglas: The poems began to emerge from the research almost immediately. That's the way my mind works. Reading a fact can instantly spark a poem, such as when a black hole is referred to as a cosmic broom ("Wish I had one in my room"). The research was ongoing until the very end of the project, with my editors challenging some of my facts along the way. Of course some poems came from wordplay, such as Saturn containing the word turn or Jupiter being Jupiterrific. After about five weeks of writing I turned to painting the illustrations, which took another three months.

Elaine: Reviewers have had high praise for the paintings you made for this book. Can you tell us about the artwork you created for your book of space poems?

Douglas: I wanted a book of space to have art that expansively fills up the pages, unlike the previous poetry books I had done about animals, where the art is surrounded by much white space. I used gouache watercolor paints because they are so brilliant, and much collage to give energy to the book. I created little asides such as a picture of a Mercury car and racing feet on the painting of the planet Mercury. I used some historical references, such as an ancient mosaic of the god Neptune, and old engravings of the Sun doubling as sunspots. I often veered away from "naturalistic" colors of celestial objects, as astronomical books often do to better convey information. So my solar system is a green living thing, always changing and evolving in our understanding of it. Rubber stamp letters were ideal for adding information in a graphic way, such as the names of moons revolving around.

Elaine: How did you come up with the idea for the die-cut holes in the pages of the book?

Douglas: I used the die-cut holes to give the reader the feeling of a space voyage in a continuum of the universe. The holes both preview and review the art and also have a telescopic feeling to them.

Elaine: I read in a Publishers Weekly online article that your editor wrote you an email after the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to dwarf planet status last August. How far had you come in the actual publishing process when the decision was made to change your poem about Pluto?

Douglas: I had actually been following the events of the convention of the International Astronomical Union, but I was surprised that Pluto was demoted to "dwarf planet," as there had been much speculation that the astronomers were going to add planets to our solar system. I rewrote my Pluto poem within one hour of finding out the "bad" news, which, as it turns out, has been good news for me, as it is one of the funniest poems in the book. Too bad they didn't fire more planets!


Here’s a sprightly poem from COMETS, STARS, THE MOON, AMD MARS:

JUPITER

Jupiter’s jumbo
Gigantic,
Immense.
So wide
Side to side,
But gaseous, not dense.
With some sixteen moons
It’s plainly prolific—
So super-dupiter
Jupiterrific!

And here's part of the painting that illustrates the poem The Universe.

Take my word for it...this image does not do justice to Florian's illustrations in the book. You'll want to see his space art firsthand...and you'll want to read the rest of the poems in his latest book!

The poem Jupiter and the universe image were used here with permission. Poem and art © 2007 Douglas Florian.


WILD ROSE READER NOTE
I want to thank Douglas Florian for being such a wonderful interviewee and for giving me permission to post a poem and an image from his excellent new collection of space poems-- COMETS, STARS, THE MOON, AND MARS.

Wild Rose Reader Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of some of this week’s Wild Rose Reader’s features:







An Interview with Douglas Florian!








Sunday Brunch with Janet Wong, which includes my recipe for cold zabaglione!

I Am Looking for a Poem About… You can request that I look for a poem on a specific topic for you. I will do my best to find one. Because of copyright laws, I will give you the title of a book/titles of books in which the poem can be found instead of posting the entire text of the poem. I just ask that requesters be reasonable with their requests.

More original poems…I hope! I’ve posted sixteen so far this month. I need fourteen more. I’ve pleaded with my muses not to pack up and leave town and take their inspiration to poets who live in warmer climes.

A Poem a Day #12

Today’s poem is for Mary Lee and Franki at A Year of Reading. Having read some of the posts at their blog, I believe I can safely infer that these two ladies must be dy-no-mite teachers! Got to love their list of 100 Cool Teachers in Children’s Literature and their list of Books about Books and Reading.

From a longtime teacher to Mary Lee and Franki: Keep up the great work in school and at A Year of Reading!

Here's a poem of address written in the form of a FAX. I got my inspiration for writing poems about Pluto when I was working on my review of COMETS, STARS, THE MOON, AND MARS, Douglas Florian’s most recent collection of poems and paintings about space.

INTERPLANETARY FAX
by Elaine Magliaro

TO: Pluto
DATE: August 24, 2006
RE: Demotion to Dwarf Status

Sorry, Pluto, you’re way too small.
You’re just an itty-bitty ball…
An insignificant cosmic dot…
A speck in the Milky Way. You’re not
Considered a planet anymore.
Here’s your pink slip; there’s the door.
You’re off the list. Goodbye! Adieu!
Don’t go making a hullabaloo.
There’s nothing…nothing…you can do.
Accept your fate.

FROM: IAU

I was inspired by Douglas Florian’s book to write the following poem, too. I posted it at Blue Rose Girls in my Update: Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars…and Pluto.

PLUTO POEM
by Elaine Magliaro

Pluto, Pluto, once a planet.
Made of ice…and, maybe granite,
A distant, tiny, frigid sphere
Demoted to a "dwarf" last year.

Pluto, Pluto, once a planet.
Astronomers said: "We should can it.
It’s much too small; its orbit’s odd
It’s named after a nasty god."

Pluto, Pluto, once a planet.
The IAU? It chose to ban it
From the planetary club.
That’s a solar systemic snub!!!

(IAU stands for the International Astronomical Union.)