Showing posts with label 811. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Nathaniel Talking by Eloise Greenfield illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist

811 GRE

Nathaniel Talking won the 1990 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. It is about a child thinking and exploring the world around him, while trying to find his own place in it. Nine-year-old Nathaniel B. Free is a free-spirited African-American boy who is very intelligent and thoughtful.

He raps,

“Rested, dressed and feeling fine /

I’ve got something on my mind /

Friends and kin and neighborhood /

Listen now and listen good /

Nathaniel’s talking /

Nathaniel B. Free.”

He continues on to rap about what it is like to be his age, the knowledge he has gained, his mother who passed away last year, his friends, his school, his family, and even his future. These complex stories are told through a child’s voice in a simple and fun way, engaging readers at a young age and encouraging them to think about the world as in depth as Nathaniel does. Gilchrist’s black-and-white pencil drawings are not playful. They illustrate the deep intellect and intelligence that each rap song encompasses. Furthermore, the illustrations are mainly of Nathaniel and the people in his life, helping readers focus on the true emotions being felt by those characters in the story. Even more, some of Nathaniel’s raps are in the form of a twelve-bar blues poem. The last page of this book engages readers even more by describing to children how to create their own twelve-bar blues poems.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

I Lay My Stitches Down: Poems of American Slavery written by Cynthia Grady, illustrated by Michele Wood

8ll GRA
I lay my stitches down and troubles fall away. Before too long, I’m breathing with the rhythm of my quilting — listening wide with every fiber of my soul: the praise songs of my people; voices of my kin; drumbeats of my motherland form the threads that weave the fabric of my life.

The role of quilts in slavery, particularly as signals in the Underground Railroad, is an ongoing debate in historical circles, but in the exceptional “I Lay My Stitches Down,” quilts become an affecting metaphor for the patchwork lives endured by American slaves. Using a structure of 10 lines of 10 syllables to reflect square patches of cloth, D.C. author Cynthia Grady presents 14 poems touching on aspects of slavery, including moments of peace, a terrible lashing and an escape attempt. Grady incorporates references to needlework into every poem: “I wait — then thread my way to freedomland”; “That overseer cut from the same cloth/as the devil hisself, the very warp/and weft.” Michele Wood’s vibrant paintings are likewise wrapped up in quilts, each one a gorgeous hodgepodge of images, colors and patterns. In one illustration, showing an escaped slave crossing a river, the blue-green night sky is made of squares and ornamented by the North Star and the moon; the water’s rings seem part of another quilt with a circular pattern embellished by small animals and lily pads. Throughout the book, the interplay between pictures and words, including the poems and succinct historical background, is deeply impressive, as seamless as it is stirring.

— Abby McGanney Nolan

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Langston Hughes

Here are two poems by Langston Hughes.

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist.

He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry.

He was born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, MO and died May 22, 1967 in New York City, NY

811 HUG

My People

The night is beautiful,

So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,

So the eyes of my people.

Beautiful, also, is the sun.

Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

8ll AFR

I, Too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes

Sunday, November 24, 2013

A Tumult of Poetry from the 800s!

When you search for subject: Poetry in the Loring Destiny Catalog you will get over 250 hits. Most of poetry is in the 800s but there is some Fiction written in poetry form.

808.81 Car

811 Sal

811.54 Nik

811.54 Pol

811 Dak

811 Upd

811.54 Beg

811 Pre

811 Spi

811 Sne

811 Sid

811 Gri

811 Ran

811 Vio

Reading and Me

When I read, I experience in poet Jane Hirshfield’s words, “a clarification and magnification of being”. Hirshfield is speaking specifically of poetry here, “its word-woven and musical invocation”. The treasure - the ability and freedom to read – and its result – knowledge, insight, wisdom, understanding, empathy, compassion - is lifeblood of human civilizations. The exploration of words (those squiggly shape pictures on the pages) – broken down into those letters in a row then a space then some more letters in a row, each having a sound and a way – knowable! – to become the sentence, the paragraph, the verse, the poem, the story, the novel, the treatise, the manifesto, the sacred statement, the myth – this exploration of words, how to read them and what they mean – this is reading. If you cannot read, the list of loss goes on forever. The works of these authors: Aardema. Alcott. Avi. Babbitt. Bemelmans. Carle. Cooney. Coville. Dahl. Dorros, DePaola. Ehlert. Galdone. Hamilton. Henkes. Keats. Kimmel. Lester. Lobel. Lowry. MacLachlan. McKissack. O’Dell. Peck. Peet. Pinkney. Polacco. Rylant. Seuss. Silverstein. Spinelli. Travers. Ungar. Van Allsburg. Wells. Wilder. Young. Zieffert. Language is a living thing – these stories are mirrors of our lives and doors into other families and cultures.

I worked for many years at the Reference Desk in the Children’s Room of the Public Library. The first key to that room is an adult who will bring a child and choose books to look at and read aloud. The second key to that room is consistent regular persistent introduction to the wealth lined up on each shelf. The third key is the habit of use – a willingness, a commitment, to go weekly, to bring a big rolling box, to read and reread and reread the books at home. Ask the librarian questions, look for answers in the books. The questions may not be “homework related” –- the questions may be “What’s a good book about taking a bath? Try The Tub People by Pam Conrad. “My child thinks she will never be able to figure some things out.” How about Leo the Late Bloomer by Robert Krauss? “We are planting a garden.” How about Allison’s Zinnia by Anita Lobel?

During my year with Minnesota Reading Corps I helped children with reading skills. I held open the door. I held open the passages. I focused on the vowels and helped turn squiggly picture shapes into words made of letters. Mystery to meaning. We walked through these doors. This is blending, this is segmenting. In blending students connect sounds together, in segmenting they separate words into sounds. The reading path begins with awareness of the page content. Reading is decoding. The words are made of sounds! The sentences are made of words! There are syllables and segments! There are rhymes! We can blend, we can combine separate sounds into meaningful words! We can take this words apart and make different words! This is segmenting, this is blending, this is reading! This has meaning. We work to achieve comprehension by constructing meaning from the written text. This word means something you can know. This vocabulary makes meaning. This story is for YOU. You make this story mean something. This is the world that reading opens and enriches. There are fierce thunderstorms here and nannies who arrive by umbrella. There are Enormous Crocodiles, Muffins for Moose, Snowy Days, Giant Peaches and Millions of Cats. There is a Bear Hunt and An Old Lady Who Swallows a Fly. There is a Velveteen Rabbit and a Garden of Verses. There is a place where there are Wild Things. This is the world that is lost to a child who cannot read.

Today in the USA most children learn to read at school. Few bring homemade lunches anymore and most bring complications that arise from our culture’s technological fixations and media fascinations. Nevertheless, schools and teachers are diligently striving to teach these children to read. Some take to it, others do not. Some have help from home, many do not. Some speak languages other than English and cannot read in either language. Some will learn to read. Some will not. Others will require a faithful consistent daily reading tutor. Be that person another student, an Associate Educator, a teacher, a parent, an encourager – we all had helpers. Here at Loring Library we have books. And I am here to open doors and read aloud and answer questions and point the way and listen and learn. Welcome to Loring Library.