Paradise Book Report

Bibliography: McLaughlin, Timothy P., and Joseph Marshall III. Walking on Earth and Touching the Sky: Poetry and Prose by Lakota Youth at Red Cloud Indian School . Ill. by S.D. Nelson. New York: Harry N Abrams, 2012. ISBN: 978-1419701795 Summary:  Walking on Earth and Touching the Sky is a sincere and moving collection of poetry and prose written by the Lakota youth at the Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. In short passages, the young writers explore their cultural heritage and the misery and resilience of Native people in modern times. A foreword by Joseph M. Marshall III (Sicangu Lakota) acknowledges the importance of listening to young voices, reminding us that no image of life is complete without the perspective of the young. The voices expressed in this book represent the legacy of the Lakota people, carried by children into the future. These children and teenagers share their experiences of life on the reservation, including a deep...

Bibliography: Janeczko, Paul B. A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms . Ill. by Chris Raschka. Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-0763641320 Summary:  A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms is a fun and colorful primer introducing the rules of twenty-nine different styles of poetry. An introduction by the editor, Paul B. Janeczko, explains that rules make “the writing of a poem more challenging and exciting,” comparing them to the rules of games and sports. These limitations can inspire creativity, and Janeczko suggests that readers try their hands at mimicking the poets’ styles, bending the rules, forming poetry clubs, and giving poems as gifts. Each poetic form is introduced with one or two poems from a diverse cast of poets, along with Chris Raschka’s quirky illustrations. Raschka represents the poetic forms in small icons that appear above the names of the forms: a pair of birds for couplets, 5 and 7 and 5 flowers for th...

Bibliography: Heard, Georgia. My Thoughts Are Clouds: Poems for Mindfulness . Ill. by Isabel Roxas. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2021. ISBN: 978-1250244680 Summary: Using the conventions of poetry, Georgia Heard introduces readers to the basics of mindfulness practice in her beautifully rendered collection My Thoughts Are Clouds: Poems for Mindfulness . Heard makes the case for mindfulness in her introductory note to readers and in poems that compare the mind to a monkey swinging from branch to branch. The following five sections introduce readers to breathing techniques ( Breathe in Breath Out ), accessible concepts for self-awareness ( Mindful Me ), poems to sharpen the senses ( Mindful World ), tools for relaxation and focus ( Meditation ), and poems to turn compassion outward to other people and all the creatures of the world ( Kindfulness ). Isabel Roxas’s whimsical and soothing blue and black illustrations combine with Heard’s poetry to create an accessible, helpful, and fun us...

Bibliography: Sidman, Joyce. Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold. Ill. by Rick Allen. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. ISBN: 978-0547906508 Summary: In Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold , Joyce Sidman shares her wonder for the miraculous ways in which animals and plants survive and thrive in the winter. The migration of tundra swans, the hibernation of snakes, the molecular structure of snowflakes, the companionship of a mother moose and her offspring, the warmth-making huddles of bee colonies, the under-ice activity of beavers, the surprising hunting partnership of ravens and wolves, the burrowing of voles under snow, the hardening of deciduous trees, and more. Each beautifully crafted poem is paired with an informational sidebar which discloses incredible facts about these wonders of the natural world. Rick Allen’s amazing linoleum-printed illustrations match Sidman’s poems in their breathtaking beauty and texture. A glossary of scientific terms appears at ...

Bibliography: Kennedy, Caroline. Poems to Learn by Heart . Ill. by Jon J. Muth. Los Angeles: Disney-Hyperion, 2013. ISBN: 978-1423108054 Summary: Poems to Learn By Heart is a diverse treasury of poems collected for readers to memorize and share. Caroline Kennedy, with the help of students from DreamYard Prep in the Bronx, has compiled an impressively broad assortment of poems ranging from complex and esoteric classics to accessible and familiar rhymes. The poems are arranged in sections by topics including poems about the self, family, friendship and love, fairies and other magical creatures, nonsense, school, sports and games, war, and nature, and the book concludes with a section entitled “Extra Credit” featuring advanced poems for memorization. Each section begins with an introduction to its theme, and Kennedy shares fascinating memorization techniques from ancient Greece and Rome, challenging the reader to push the limits of their recall and join in the tradition of bards who could...

Bibliography:  Grimes, Nikki. One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance . New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. ISBN: 978-1681196022 Summary: In One Last Word , master poet Nikki Grimes transforms classic poetry of the Harlem Renaissance into new poems using a method called the “Golden Shovel.” By arranging the words of the source poem vertically in the right margin, they become the last words of each line of a new poem. The result is an empowering collection of classic works by Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Gwendolyn Bennett, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and more, paired with their ingeniously crafted new incarnations by Nikki Grimes. The poems, divided into three sections ( Emergency Measures , Calling Dreams , and To A Dark Girl ), explore resilience, beauty, self-love, hatred, hope, and Black joy. Each pair of poems is beautifully complemented by a richly colored illustration from a different artist (including Grimes herself). A preface provides background information on the Harlem Rena...

Bibliography: Hoberman, Mary Ann and Linda Winston. The Tree That Time Built: A Celebration of Nature, Science, and Imagination (A Poetry Speaks Experience) . Ill. by Barbara Fortin. Naperville: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2009. ISBN: 978-1402225178 Summary:  The Tree That Time Built is an ingenious interdisciplinary anthology of nature poetry united by the common thread of Darwin’s discoveries of evolutionary principles. Classic and contemporary poets (such as Mary Oliver, Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Hans Christian Anderson, Rumi, Joyce Sidman, Carl Sandberg, Eve Merriam, and Joseph Bruchac, to name a few) offer meditations on the remarkable adaptations of living organisms and celebrate the wonders of the natural world. Nine thematic sections divide the poems into topics with poetic headings such as “Oh, Fields of Wonder,” “The Sea is Our Mother,” “ Think Like a Tree,” “Some Primal Termite,” “Everything That Lives Wants to Fly,” “I Am the Family Fac...

Bibliography: Engle, Margarita. Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir . New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2015. ISBN: 978-1481435222 Summary:  Margarita Engle recounts her childhood flying between her home in Los Angeles and her abuelita’s home in Cuba where she spends her summers. A precocious and curious young girl, Margarita is fascinated by the magical world of nature, especially the dancing plants and exotic farm life she encounters in Cuba. In Los Angeles, she dreams of flying horses and covers her walls with poems. While her mother is Cuban, her father is American and the son of Ukrainian immigrants who fled to the United States. Margarita drifts between two worlds, two cultures, spending sunny summers in Cuba until the Cold War interrupts her travels and separates her from her Cuban relatives, causing her mother to become a “ghost,” or an immigrant with no country. When the “Cuban” Missile Crisis passes without erupting into nuclear war, Margarita is re...

Bibliograpy: Alexander, Kwame. The Undefeated . Ill by Kadir Nelson. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019. ISBN: 978-1328780966 Summary:  The Undefeated is a stirring and empowering ode to the black artists, athletes, dreamers, and icons of American history. Kwame Alexander’s stunning poem is joined by Kadir Nelson’s rich oil illustrations depicting important historical figures such as Fredrick Douglass, Billie Holiday, Muhammad Ali, Serena Williams, the soldiers of the United States Colored Troops who fought in the Civil War, those who lived and died on slave ships in the Middle Passage, as well as victims of police brutality such as Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, and Trayvon Martin. A powerful afterword written by the author places the poem’s occasion in context, explaining that it is a tribute to both the birth of his second daughter and the election of Barack Obama, noting that much of American history has been left out of textbooks, ignored, or forgotten. By citing examples o...

Bibliography: Singer, Marilyn. Echo Echo: Reverso Poems About Greek Myths . Ill. by Josée Masse. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2016. ISBN: 978-0803739925 Summary: In this collection of poems, Marilyn Singer briefly recounts twelve Greek myths using reverso poetry, a type of poem invented by Singer herself. After an introductory poem entitled “The Age of Marvelous Myths,” the poems tell the tales of Pandora, Arachne and Athena, King Midas, Perseus and Medusa, Narcissus and Echo, and more. Below each poem is a short synopsis of the myth--just enough to get the gist. The book concludes with a poem called “Gods and Mortals” followed by an author’s note sharing background information about Greek mythology and the unique style of reverso poetry.  Analysis: If you’ve never heard of reverso poetry, it is a clever style of poem construction in which there are two versions of the same poem: one is read from top to bottom, and the second poem arranges the same lines in reverse orde...

Bibliography: Zoboi, Ibi and Yusef Salaam. Punching the Air . Ill. by Omar T. Pasha. New York: Balzer+Bray, 2020. ISBN: 978-0062996480 Summary: Amal Shahid, a young, Black artist and poet at an arts high school, finds himself at the wrong place at the wrong time, irrevocably changing the trajectory of his life. A confrontation in a gentrifying neighborhood lands him in juvenile detention for a crime that he didn’t commit. After he faces trial where Ms. Rinaldi, his AP art teacher, serves as a poor character witness, he must survive the dehumanization of being processed and incarcerated. Amal survives on correspondence with Zenobia, a classmate who he never got the nerve to ask out, and they share letters and drawings though the mail. He cautiously forms an alliance with several other young men to watch each other’s backs, and they share a sense of brotherhood as they follow their program of classes and avoid trouble with a white supremacist guard. The collection of poems, divided into ...

Bibliography:  McCullough, Joy. Blood Water Paint . New York: Dutton Books, 2018. ISBN: 978-0735232112 Summary: Blood Water Paint , based on the true story of Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi, portrays the struggle of a brilliant young woman who must endure the misogyny of her times. After the death of her mother, she must either join a convent as a nun or stay with her father grinding pigment in his studio. Although she herself is responsible for his success, correcting and embellishing his masterpieces with her superior skill, her father claims credit and treats her not as an apprentice but as a mere servant and model. When a prominent artist visits her father’s studio and sexually assaults her, Artemisia must draw strength from the memory of her mother’s stories of Susanna and Judith, strong women from biblical tales who become the subjects of two of Gentileschi’s most famous works. When Artemisia accuses the artist of his crime, she must defend herself before a court o...

Bibliography: Florian, Douglas. on the wing. New York, Voyager Books, 2000. ISBN: 978-0152023669.  Summary: In this collection of bird poems and paintings by Douglas Florian, 21 species of birds receive whimsical poetic tributes paired with equally playful paintings. On the wing features the egret, the green catbird, the vulture, quetzal, and whooping crane to name a few. Readers will recognize some familiar feathers while others will be strange new friends rendered in words and watercolors. Florian captures both the unique appearance and behaviors of the birds in his short, rhyming poems.  Analysis: In Douglas Florian’s on the wing , he celebrates various birds with clever rhymes and quirky, surrealistic art. His similes, such as the Andean cock-of-the-rock’s “crest that’s as round as a clock,” are depicted literally in his paintings, the bird’s red crest marked with numbers and clock hands. Inside the head of the hill mynah, whose voice “can mimic anything,” appears a reel-...