Novel in Verse
Then, Boom! by Lisa Fipps
I know that a book is a five star read when I linger on the last words and then immediately start rereading the first. AND THEN, BOOM! is a novel in verse that is bound to hook readers on the genre.
Author, Lisa Fipps, crafted a subtitle for each emotional poem. Case in point, Fipps’ poetic advice on page 5 “And-thens, and Booms!” fed my curiosity. Her wordless poem on page 20 “What I know about my dad” is a brilliant use of the novel in verse form. The main character, Joe speaks to the reader’s heart as do his cast of family and friends along the way. The heartfelt honesty that flows in each poem is captivating. [Quite frankly, this book is a fantastic mentor text for writers who are studying the interiority writing technique.] The characters’ thoughts, feelings, inner struggles, and motivations hit home. The sad reality of living unhoused is revealed too. Lisa Fipps writes with an unforgettable style. Her use of intentionality is beautiful. Her page turns, line break spacing, foreshadowing, metaphors, wishes, and unfortunate realities…provide a you-must-read-this-book-reasons. Every last word adds up to down-right excellence. I know I will gift this book over and over again. It is sure to be a classic.
Picture Book Poetry
A Planet Is a Poem by Amanda West Lewis
What do I love about this book? To begin, the unique illustrations by Oliver Averill in A PLANET IS A POEM captivated me. The artistic explosions, starry brilliance, and close ups made me pause and go back to each spread. The fold-out pages brought me in closer with scientific descriptions of the planets and the poetic form used. However, I could not wait to get to the next illustrations and poems. Quite a dilemma: stay and learn on each or forge onward on the tour of the universe to enjoy more? To go further into the universe of poetry, amazing Amanda West Lewis gave us 14 beautiful poems. (sonnet, ode, rhyming poem, villanelle, ballad, persona, sestina, free verse, acrostic, comparison, prose, cinquain, hip-hop, and concrete) This book is a perfect fit for on-your-own-writing, learning about and trying out poetry forms, students in science class studying the nuances of the universe, and English classes learning about and writing various poetry forms. This is an incredibly accessible picture book for future astronomers, kidlit poets who love word-smithing, skywatching, as well as for every curious person on this Earth – and beyond.
Windsongs: Poems about Weather by Douglas Florian
Learning about weather in science class? Want to inject rhymes and humor into your calendar/carpet time when talking about the upcoming weather? Look no further. Douglas Florian’s poems in WINDSONGS: POEMS ABOUT WEATHER will make you smile all the while thinking about the various weather-related vocabulary. There are no sidebars for scientific definitions to interrupt the flow from poem to poem, but the back matter does a good job of helping kids to understand the terms. I appreciate the terms touched upon via poems in WINDSONGS: weather, atmosphere, sun, cloud, rain, hurricane, hail, wind, frost, lightning, thunder, snow, tornado, fog, flood, drought, weather instruments, meteorologist, dew, and climate change. The final poem in this collection deals with climate change with the very last line, “Our blue planet Earth is all that we’ve got.” Lots of deep discussion can come from this collection. Florian’s fun kid-like artwork was created with gouache paint, colored pencils, and rubber stamps on primed paper bags. This book can also be used for a poem-a-day and for students who are creating their own poetry to define vocabular
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