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THE ARROW FINDS ITS MARK

Name: THE ARROW FINDS ITS MARK
Author: Georgia Heard
ISBN: 978-1-59643-665-7

edited by Georgia Heard & illustrated by Antoine Guilloppé ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 27, 2012

Students may not be convinced these are real poems, but they’ll enjoy creating them anyway, whatever they are.

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Found poems can be found right here in a small anthology of original poems.

Found poems are exactly what their name implies: poems created out of words and phrases found in all sorts of places—on Facebook, in a thesaurus, in newspaper advertisements in magazines, on detergent boxes and signs in a hardware store. But, as the introduction cautions, “If you put a frame around any text and insert line breaks and stanzas—it won’t necessarily be a poem.” It takes vision to see the potential of poetry all around us, and then it takes magic to elevate and deepen the language. The first lines of Heard’s opening poem, “Find a Poem,” define the finding poet’s process: “come across / chance upon / stumble on / discover / turn up / bring to light.” Aimed at young readers, with an eye to helping them learn to write their own found poems, the collection will be a handy guide to an accessible form. Not so easy will be getting students to understand what makes these poetry, and a bit of elaboration in the introduction would have helped make the case. But certainly in the spirit of helping young people play with language, this will be a welcome addition to every teacher’s writing toolbox.

Students may not be convinced these are real poems, but they’ll enjoy creating them anyway, whatever they are. (Poetry. 8-12)

Pub Date: March 27, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-59643-665-7

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY

- BOOK REVIEW
MY THOUGHTS ARE CLOUDS
by Georgia Heard ; illustrated by Isabel Roxas

- BOOK REVIEW
BOOM! BELLOW! BLEAT!
by Georgia Heard ; illustrated by Aaron DeWitt

- BOOK REVIEW
FALLING DOWN THE PAGE
edited by Georgia Heard

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AN EYEBALL IN MY GARDEN

edited by Jennifer Cole Judd & Laura Wynkoop & illustrated by Johan Olander ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2010

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The emphasis is more on funny than scary in this slim collection, though a few individual poems may give pause. Stella Michel’s mummy mourns the waste of good ingredients: “Fruit bat wings with Hollandaise, / eyeballs in a demi-glaze” don’t do much good for a monster with no stomach. Edna Cabcabin Moran’s zombie kid tries to catch a baseball, but the impact takes his hand off with the mitt. But in “The Witching Hour,” by Angela McMullen, an unnamed protagonist lies sleepless, hoping to survive till morning, and Wynkoop’s wishing well delivers an “eyeless beast with jagged teeth... / To search for frightened children with its heightened sense of smell.” Co-anthologist Judd is also well-represented here, with a bat-shaped concrete poem among others. While there are chills and chuckles both among these verses, they are mild ones—an additional purchase. (Poetry. 8-12)

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-7614-5655-1

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Marshall Cavendish

Review Posted Online: June 14, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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LEMONADE

AND OTHER POEMS SQUEEZED FROM A SINGLE WORD

by Bob Raczka and illustrated by Nancy Doniger ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2011

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Fresh off his engaging Guyku: A Year of Haiku for Boys (illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds, 2010) and inspired by the work of Andrew Russ, Raczka continues to dabble in short lyric forms, here experimenting with images conjured up by breaking down a single word. The smaller components that comprise the subsequent free-verse poem read left to right, cascading down the page while maintaining the same horizontal letter positions as in the original word. For example, “vacation” yields “ac tion / i n / a / va n,” alongside Doniger’s spare three-color drawing of a family and a rabbit traveling through the countryside in a van with a canoe on the roof. For readers who find the spatiality of the lettering a challenge for comprehension, Raczka sets the poem in more standard format, “vacation / action / in / a / van,” on the following page. While these 22 poems are uniformly clever, some, like “earthworms”—“a / short / storm / worms / here / worms / there / wear / shoes”—are more successful than others, such as “flowers”—“we slow / for / free / wows”—both in their playfulness and in evoking the suggestive depths of language. Fun as a prompt for poetic exploration but less fulfilling as a stand-alone volume. (Poetry. 8-12)