Blog Post #7 (Poetry)

 


The poetry anthology I chose is My Dog May be a Genius by Jack Prezutsky. This is a collection of funny poems that kids would get a absolute kick out of. Most of them involve people or animals doing funny things. One of my favorite ones that I read is "I Know You Won't Believe Me" which is from the perspective of a student to a teacher and what happened to his homework. Here's an excerpt of the poem, 

"I rummaged through the closets,
the kitchen, and the den,
expecting that my homework
would soon be seen again.
But when I saw the ashes, 
you should have heard me shriek-
my dragon burned my homework,
just like he did last week."(Prezutsky, 2008, pg 13).

Jack Prezutsky's collection of poems in My Dog May be a Genius are so funny and lighthearted. The thing that makes this collection of poems stand out to me is how each one has a rhyme scheme or a rhythmic pattern. These poetic devices are a big part of what make these poems so much fun to read and for students to listen to. It's "candy to our ears" as Robert Frost puts it. 

The poetry picture book that I chose is called On the Same Day in March: A Tour of the World's Weather by Marilyn Singer and illustrated by Frane Lessac. Marilyn Singer won the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children in 2015. You can kind of observe from the title of the book that not only does this book fit in the genre of poetry, but it also is non-fiction and informing the reader about the weather around the world. This book could also fit in the multicultural genre as well. What a great book! Marilyn Singer just does just an excellent job of informing the reader about the science of weather as it relates to the world we live in. I personally liked the connection I had to her mention of Texas since that's where I'm from. In this book, through poems, she talks about Alberta, Canada, Paris, France, Xian, China, Darjeeling, India, Northern Kenya, and Darwin, Australia and what their weather would be like "on the same day in March." Just such a fun book that would be great to integrate into a science lesson.

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