Books That Make a Splash

 Visit Kellee and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts the hosts for this meme. A great place to find children's books and YA! If you want a better and longer reading list, check them out!

 

 

I have been reading all things poetry lately and trying to really get more aquainted with children poets. I recently picked up a few books that were new to me and had to share.

Splash! Poems of Our Watery World by Constance Levy

I am finishing up a unit on earth and earth materials so these poems about water are a great accompaniment to my lessons. I want to share so many but I must pick a couple to give you a taste if you have never seen this book. So, rather than me try to tell you about it, I will let the poems speak for themselves.

Drops

A teardrop

looks like sadness

and has a salty taste.

A raindrop tastes of sky

and brings a shower.

A dewdrop is a new drop,
a taste-of-morning-brew drop
and is probably delicious
to a flower.



Full Moon
on Mirror Lake

Tonight
on this still,
smooth lake
high
in its forest place,
the wandering,
wondering moon
becomes acquainted
with his face.


Water Wizard

I am a wizard of shapes and moods:
I'm ice, I'm fog.
I grow your food.

I quench your thirst,
I flood, I launder,
I mirror, I skip,
I race, I wander.

I dribble and drip,
I float a ship.

I soothe a throat,
I brew your tea.

I swim in you,
you swim in me.

Another poetry book I picked up late last week and plan to share with my students is call Give Yourself to the Rain by Margaret Wise Brown. Here is one of my favorites from the book. It crossed my mind that each student could probably take a line and illustrate it for a class book; might be a neat project.

In the Woods

Silence of the deep green wood

Where little sounds are heard

The flutter of such tiny wings

The buzz and sudden springs
Of grasshoppers flying from the grass
Where the shining beetle traffics pass
Near the roots of the long green grass
And in the birch trees
The rustling of sunlit leaves
The silence of logs, the coldness of stones
Deep in the deep green wood alone
Where the little sounds are heard
And the terrible clap of the wings of a bird
Flying to break
The high silence

Of the still blue sky.

I have been looking for a book of concrete poems, poems that form a picture. I thought these would be fun to share and show the flexibility that poems offer. I found a great one that relates to water again! (I have gotten really lucky)!

Splish Splash by Joan Bransfield Graham, Illustrated by Steve Scott

Here are two that I thought were fun and would be easy for my students to imagine creating.