MODULE 2: MAJOR POETS AND AWARDS

Friendly Four. By Eloise Greenfield. (1997 NCTE Award Winner)

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Greenfield, Eloise. 2006. THE FRIENDLY FOUR. Ill. by Jan Spivey Gilchrist. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 9780060007591.
2. SUMMARY AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS
This collection of poems written for multiple voices features four friends; Drum, Dorene, Louis and Rae, introduced in that order. Drum is anticipating a boring summer and is pleasantly surprised by three new friends who move to the neighborhood. The poems are mostly about the good times and the easy rapport that develops between the friends. But as the book progresses we see that the friendship offers a haven from family problems and worries. The poems are a playful and poignant portrait of the power that friendship provides to help kids lay their burdens down and seek safety and solace in each other's company. The watercolor paintings are not effective in enhancing the depth and sweetness of the friendship, but may appeal to young children.
3. POEM AND CONNECTIONS
These poems are written for multiple voices and their subjects,- imaginative play and verbal banter,- is accessible to children. A reader's theater activity around this books would be a lively and meaningful experience. Not all of the poems are playful. In "Someone," Louis finally finds the motherly love he has craved:

" Louis: My new mama really looks at me.
not at all like the other two,
who looked past me into nothing.
My new mama's eyes turn soft,
when she sees me,
like the eyes of someone
I think I knew......"

Children could create a poem similar to the ones in the book featuring themselves and their friends.

19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East. By Naomi Shihab Nye. (Multicultural) National Book Award Finalist

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nye, Naomi Shihab. 2002. 19 VARIETIES OF GAZELLE:POEMS OF THE MIDDLE EAST. New York: Greenwillow Books. ISBN 0060097655.
2. SUMMARY AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Nye is an Arab American whose love for the land and the people of the Middle East is beautifully expressed in this collection of sixty poems written and collected after September 11th. In her introduction she relates her experience of turning to poetry for solace after the tragedy of 9/11. She writes, "Poetry slows us down, cherishes small details. A large disaster erases those details." The small details of life in the Middle East are beautifully articulated in Nye's poems that give the reader a sense of the aromas of the earth and fruits, the sound of Arabic music, and visions of the land untouched and ravaged by conflict.
Nye was born in the United States but has spent a lot of time in the Middle East. She says," All my life I thought about the Middle East, wrote about it, wondered about it, visited it, lived in it, loved it." These poems are an expression of love and sorrow for the land and the people.
3. POEM AND CONNECTIONS
The poem, "My father and the fig tree" is about her father who we learn earlier, came the United States after being forced from his home in Jerusalem after in 1948. The poem is light-hearted, but at the same time relates the powerful hold that the memory of home has on her father. The poem begins with the poet remembering how her father would insert a fig tree into any story he told her as a child and ends with her father, later in his life, finally owning a house with a fig tree in the yard:

"The last time he moved, I had a phone call,
my father, in Arabic, chanting a song
I'd never heard. "What's that?"
He took me out to the new yard.
There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas,
a tree with the largest, fattest,
sweetest figs in the world.
"It's a figtree song," he said,
plucking his fruits like ripe tokens,
emblems, assurance
of a world that was always his own.
(excerpt from the poem, My Father and the Figtree, p6)

The poems in the book are a like a meditation of the Middle East, each one a deep exploration into the the effects that the land and the tragic events have on the lives of the people.
This would be a good book to use in an ESL middle or high school class. Students could write poems about their memories of home.




Bow Wow meow meow: it's rhyming cats and dogs. By Douglas Florian

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Florian, Douglas.(2003). BOW WOW MEOW MEOW: IT'S RHYMING CATS AND DOGS. San Diego: Harcourt. ISBN 0152163956
2. SUMMARY AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS
The design of this book's cover paired with its title make it immediately appealing. From the eye catching bright pink cover with a cat, mouth wide open, holding a dog, bone in mouth, upon its tongue! Douglas Florian could convert anyone who claims to hate poetry into a poetry zealot. The twenty-one poems, all about cats or dogs and illustrated with the breed featured in the poem, are funny and have such strong cadence and rhythm that they make you want to dance, except you would be too captivated by the pictures! The concrete poems are fun, particularly "The Poodles," where the words are arranged in curls with lines like: "Poodles have oodles and oodles of curls," or "The curls may have whirls, while the whirls may have swirls." The pictures are the perfect compliment to the poems.

3. POEM AND CONNECTIONS
In the poem, "The Dachshund," Florian's watercolor of a dachshund bus with it's passenger fleas will surely make the reader giggle. Short up front/And short behind/But so long in-between/The fleas all ride/Upon my side/In my s t r e t c h limousine.
This book has so much potential for learning opportunities. Any child who has ever owned a cat or dog, or even loved one from afar, could create her own poem and picture. A fun activity would be to hold up a picture of a pet and ask the children to write a rhyming poem about the animal.