Another Goodwill Autograph

Copy of Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888 (Simon & Schuster, 2003) with inscription and signature. 

Kids Caught Reading

He's reading an Usbourne book called Prehistoric Animals. He's very interested in dire wolves and saber-toothed cats after a recent visit to the La Brea Tar Pits with his grandma. 

Illustrated Children's Poetry Anthologies I Love

Contemporary volumes. 

Kennedy-Muth are a terrific combination. "Feathers" by Joseph Bruchac from The Tree That Time Built causes me to spontaneously burst into tears. 

Titles, clockwise from top left:

• A Family of Poems, selected by Caroline Kennedy
  
• Poems to Learn by Heart, selected by Caroline Kennedy
  
• The Oxford Treasury of Children's Poems (1994 ed.), selected by Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark

• Sing a Song of Popcorn, selected by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers
  
• The Tree That Time Built, selected by children's poet laureate Mary Ann Hoberman

Vintage and out-of-print titles. The two on the right include great background information and biographical details. 

Titles, clockwise from top left:

• The Big Golden Book of Poetry, selected by Jane Werner (see previous blog post about this title)
  
• The Golden Treasury of Poetry, selected by Louis Untermeyer
  
• The Illustrated Treasury of Poetry for Children, selected by David Ross
  
• A Child's First Book of Poems, illustrated by Cyndy Szekeres

And here are two very special contemporary poems I first met in the Kennedy-Muth Family book. I think both them might resonate with the readership of this blog.

To P.J. (2 yrs. old. who sed write a poem for me in Portland, Oregon)

by Sonia Sanchez

if i cud ever write a

poem as beautiful as u

little 2/yr/old/brotha,

i wud laugh, jump, leap

up and touch the stars

cuz u be the poem i try for

each time i pick up a pen and paper

u. and Morani and Mungu

be our blue/blk/stars that

will shine on our lives and

makes us finally BE.

if i cud ever write a poem as beautiful

as u, little 2/yr/old/ brotha,

poetry wud go out of bizness.

Scaffolding

by Seamus Heaney

Masons, when they start upon a building,

Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won't slip at busy points,

Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job's done,

Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seems to be

Old bridges breaking between you and me,

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall,

Confident that we have built our wall.

Why I love having a large home library

Why I love having a large home library: At 830 on a Saturday night, when kiddo looks up at the stars and wants to know about that killer in the sky, we can pull a variety of works from our shelves and do a mini-unit study on the constellation Orion. 

"The Hunter"

A night long

Across the sky

Orion the hunter

Goes striding by

What is the quarry

He pursues

Through stars as bright

And thick as dews

And who has heard

His great dog bark

Sirius baying

Through the dark?

Geocentrism? Preschool worldview

"This is the light side and this is the dark side, and this is the sun and that is the moon, and it says 'This is the world I want to change.' ". --Jackson, 4 years 10 months

Rise and Read

Reading is the pathway

From the dungeon

To the door.

Freedom

Reading is the highway from

The shadow to the sun

Freedom

Reading is the river

To your liberty

For all your life to come

Let the river run

Learn

Learn to read.

“Choose Your Freedom -- Learn to Read”

by Dr. Maya Angelou, 2002

As published in Rise and Read by Sandra L. Pinkney & Myles C. Pinkney, Scholastic, 2006.

Lucy Calkins' List of Short Read-Aloud Novels for K-2

pp 38-39, Raising Lifelong Learners, Calkins

• Stuart Little, by E.B. White
• The Dragonling, by Florence Koller
• Catwings and Catwings Return, by Ursula Le Guin
• Fantastic Mr. Fox and George's Marvelous Machine, by Roald Dahl
• The Hundred Dresses, by Eleanor Estes
• Harry's Mad (and others), by Dick King-Smith
• Matthew and the Sea Singer, by Jill Patton Walsh
• Chocolate Fever, by Robert K. Smith
• A Lion to Guard Us, by Clyde Robert Bulla
• Owls in the Family, by Farley Mowat
• Stone Fox, by John R. Gardiner

There Was a Child Went Forth by Walt Whitman

There Was a Child Went Forth

by Walt Whitman

There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he looked upon, that object he became.
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain
   part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years:
The early lilacs became part of this child....
And the apple-trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit
   afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road;
And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school....

The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture
   --the yearning and swelling heart....

The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time--the
    curious whether and how.
Whether that which appears is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets--if they are
    not flashes and specks, what are they?

These became part of that child who went forth every day,
    and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.