Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night

Author:  Joyce Sidman
Illustrator:  Rick Allen
Published:  2010
Newbery Honor Book

This book of poems takes us from evening through the night all of the way to dawn.  Even the end papers are a signal of the passage of time.  The pages in the front are dark like night and the ones in the back are a light orange/pink like the sunrise.  The first and last pictures in the book are also closely related.  Looking at the first picture closely, you notice that the moon is rising and night life is awakening.  The owl is flying while the lights are on in the house.  In the last picture, the owl is resting on a branch, ready to rest for the day as the sun rises.  The lights are off in the house and the windows are open with a breeze blowing the curtains on the 2nd floor.

The writing in this book is in two parts.  One part is the poem and the second part is the information about the animals of the night.  The poem is on the page to the left with a picture of a wandering eft and sometimes of another creature as well.  The page on the right is primarily the picture of the life being described along with the factual information.  The pictures are framed, but the plants and animals tend to break through the border of the frame. 

The prints were made "by the process of relief printing."  A sketch "was transferred onto a sheet of linoleum mounted on wood, and the drawing is then cut and carved away...The areas left uncut are covered with ink and printed on paper by had or on a press." As I look at the pictures I notice lots of texture, colors, and shading - just like nature.  The artwork in this book is beautiful and I found myself searching through the picture for the creatures hidden in the foliage.

The first poem welcomes all of the animals of the night and then the poems progress with each waking critter as it travels through the trees, grass, the pond, or the air. There are some poems about trees and mushrooms too. The poem that stands out to me is Dark Emperor.  The Dark Emperor is the great horned owl.  This poem stands out because the words are laid out to resemble an owl.  The poem is told from the point of view of a small mouse who does not want to be found by the owl. 

The last three poems get us closer to dawn.  The wandering eft is a newt that is active both in day and night and lives in both water and on land at some point in its life.  The animals are falling asleep as the bat wraps himself off to hang on a branch at dawn.  Finally, the moon cries, "Where has everyone gone?"  The picture that accompanies the Moon's Lament shows the moon setting, the raccoon heading back to its tree, and the flowers closing their buds. 

The book has a glossary to help explain the different terms used on the pages with the facts.  Teachers could use this book along with Joyful Noise to teach about habitats and adaptations in science, parts of a book in language arts, and reading for comprehension of the poetry based on the facts that are provided.  I was not looking forward to reading this book, but thoroughly enjoyed the poetry and the pictures.  It is a beautiful book that I will use to teach.

By the way, Ms. Sidman's dog has a blogsite, so how could I not like her?  Visit Watson!

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Joyce Sidman's website

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom

Author:  Margarita Engle
Published:  2008
Newbery Honor Book
Pura Belpre Award
 

Another great poetry book.  I think I'm liking free verse.  I picked this book only because I saw the gold coins on the front.  One for the Newbery Honor Book and the other for the Pura Belpre Award. 

This story is about Rosa, a former slave in Cuba.  She has knowledge to heal those that are injured by using the plants that are in her surroundings.  Rosa helps anyone regardless of their views.  Since she is open to helping anyone, she is able to get many that are fighting against Cuba's freedom to join her side. 

From the time that Rosa is a child, she is a healer.  The Spanish fear her and consider her to be a witch.  Once she is freed, she is hunted.  She is hunted because she is feared and because she heals everyone.  The story is told from Rosa's point-of-view primarily at the beginning, but there are other characters who also share their insights.  There is Lieutenant Death, who has known Rosa since they were both children.  He and his father would bring captured slaves back to Rosa so she could heal them and they could go back to work.  It becomes his life mission to capture Rosa even after she heals him of his injuries.  Jose, Rosa's husband also shares his struggles.  He fights to keep Rosa safe as the price for her life increases.  He protects the patients in her hospitals that are hidden throughout Cuba.  Silvia is another character in the story.  Her grandmother had been healed by Rosa in her youth.  Silvia has lost her family in reconcentration camps and is desperate to find Rosa to learn from her and to help her heal.  Finally, there are also poems from General Weyler.  Weyler wants to win Cuba back from Spain, but the number of innocent civilians that die in his reconcentration camps because they are not well cared for makes his command in Cuba a failure.

The United States becomes involved in the war when the USS Maine is destroyed in Havana Harbor.  There is no explanation for the explosion and Rosa thinks that maybe the US bombed its own ship so it could get involved in the war.  "Just to have an excuse for fighting in Cuba so close to the end of our three wars for independence." 

Jose wants to tell his wife that they have won this war for independence, but all he can tell her is that the war is over, but the Americans have taken over.  Rosa feels betrayed, she thought the Americans were there to help the Cubans.  The Cubans are not even allowed to participate in the surrender.  "Our Cuban flag is still forbidden."  Rosa is grateful for the peace and hope.  Silvia realizes that this is not the peace that she imagined, but she is still hopeful as well.

This story is based on fact.  There really was a Rosa who cared for people and her husband, Jose, who helped with the hospitals.  There really was a Lieutenant Death, but his role in the story is very fictionalized.  Unfortunately, we don't really know what happens to Lieutenant Death at the end of the story.  His last entry says that he is "lost and alone."  I could not find anything about his history and death in my searches on the Internet.

I was interested in knowing why Margarita Engle, the author, wrote in free verse.  This is history and she could have given us so much more information if this was written as a historical fiction novel.  She wrote:

 “When I wrote The Poet Slave of Cuba and The Surrender Tree as historical novels in free verse, I hoped that the form would appeal to young adult readers who want a full-length book with mature topics, but may be intimidated by the more crowded pages of traditional prose. Personally, I am in love with the novel in verse form. Poetry allows me to distill a complex story down to its emotional essence. I think students focus on the challenges characters face. The one comment I consistently get when teenagers write to me is: “I thought my own life was hard, but now I really appreciate all that I have.” (http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6640331.html)

I think Engle made a good choice.  As I read, I felt like I was in the minds of the characters and I could understand their experiences.  Children who read this book could easily begin to understand the experiences of Rosa and her fight to free Cuba.

I am a new fan of poetry.  I will search more books written in this way.  Poetry was always something so vague and scary in high school.  I think my teacher chose poems that were extremely difficult to understand to intimidate as opposed to inspire.  As I read about this book on the Internet, I find that I'm not alone in my fear of poetry. Exposure to this book and others like it (Inside Out & Back Again) might help change the minds of terrified high school students who despise poetry and history!

More books by Margartia Engle
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Inside Out & Back Again

Author:  Thanhha Lai
Published: 2011
Newbery Honor Book
National Book Award Winner
 

I'm not a big reader of poetry.  As a child I remember learning about poetry and I thought it was just a way for people to write without regard to the rules of writing.  I don't really understand poetry and why things are lined up like they are, why things are not capitalized, or why punctuation seems to be missing.  I understood poetry with rules, limericks, sonnets, and if they rhymed then even better, but that's about it.  I was always embarrassed when teachers had us write poetry and then I had to read it aloud.  I felt like a fraud. 

The book I picked to read related to poetry is Inside Out & Back Again.  This is free verse.  I had to look that up to understand what that meant.  I'm not sure if I could teach about free verse, but here are some sites that helped me learn about it:

http://www.poetry4kids.com/blog/news/how-to-write-a-free-verse-poem/

http://www.edu.pe.ca/stjean/playing%20with%20poetry/Hickey/Free%20Verse.htm

I liked the description I read on one site and it is what we say to our children all of the time as they write, "Show me, don't tell me!"  Since it's Poetry Month maybe I'll have to give it a try even though it scares me A LOT!  Here is an excerpt from the book that helped me see what Ha was experiencing when she boarded the ship to escape from Vietnam.  This is such a visual description of her experience. 

Everyone knows the ship
could sink,
unable to hold
the piles of bodies
that keep crawling on
like raging ants
from a disrupted nest.


I looked up information on the author, Thanhha Lai, because I wanted to understand why she wrote in free verse.  I found it interesting that one of her favorite books is Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night, one of the books we have to read for our class.  Was she inspired to write because of the poetry she had read?

Vietnamese flag

I struck gold, I found a recording of Thanhha Lai explaining why she chose to write a poem.  It turns out that the Vietnamese language is based on Chinese and that the Chinese language is based on pictures.  Ms. Lai found the English language too long and complicated to express her own language.  Writing the story as a poem let her write the pictures.  Here is the clip where she explains all of this.  She also reads a poem from the book.  http://www.teachingbooks.net/book_reading.cgi?id=7256&a=1

This story is based on Thanhha Lai's life.  She bases the story on her own experiences. 


I have to tell you, this book helped me love poetry.  I liked that it was a story and taught me about history and that it was very easy to read. 

This is the story of Ha, a young girl born in Vietnam and living with her mother and three brothers.  Her father left for a job in the navy nine years earlier and never returned.  It is now 1975 and North Vietnam has conquered South Vietnam so it is now entirely communist.  The family decides that it is best to escape even if they are still waiting for father.  They will find a way to communicate with the family and reconnect if he is still alive.

The story is divided into four different parts.  The first part is Saigon.  In Saigon Ha is smart, has

friends, and enjoys growing plants.  She is especially fond of papaya.  Ha's mother finally decides to leave when President Thieu announces that he is retiring, but he will never leave his people or country.  Ha's mother knows that he is lying.  I found an article in The New York Times from the death of President Thieu in 2001.  Soon after leaving Vietnam, he moved to London and then Boston where he lived and eventually died.  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/01/us/nguyen-van-thieu-is-dead-at-76-last-president-of-south-vietnam.html

Part II Of the book is At Sea.  This is the voyage to escape Vietnam and when Ha says good-bye to Vietnam and her old life.  Her brother says good-bye to his baby chick, she says goody-bye to her old doll, and the yellow flag with red stripes is lowered.  Americans discover the ship with these families and they are then taken to Guam.  It is in Guam that they learn English and choose where they want to go from there.  Mother chooses America.  The family is transported to Florida until it is sponsored by a "cowboy" in Alabama. 

Part III of the book is Alabama.  In order to leave the camp in Florida, Vietnamese families had to be sponsored by an American.  The American who sponsors Ha's family takes her and her family to Alabama.  Life is difficult in Alabama because no one has seen anyone like this family before.  Also, Ha feels dumb because she is learning a new language and the teacher has the children clap for her whenever she does something correctly.  They don't know that she knows multiple digit multiplication and that she really is smart.  Eventually, she shows them and to make things better she makes friends.  Things start looking up. 

Part IV is From Now On.  It is a new year, Tet, and luck starts on the New Year.  The family has accepted that father is gone, Ha is doing well in school, and her brothers are going to school and getting jobs.  Everyone is hopeful.

After I finished reading this book I met a woman from Vietnam, Trini.  I told her about the book and then she told me her story.  Trini was born in 1975 and her mom tried to escape many times.  Once she was even able to board a helicopter to escape, but one of her siblings could not board, so they could not leave.  It was not until the 80s that Trini and her family were able to leave.  She said that they were lucky.  They lived in a small farming village between the north and the south and it was so poor that no one paid any attention to them.  Their village was left alone.  She didn't have electricity and she and her family grew their own food.  She was raised as a vegetarian so they ate a lot of rice mixed with fruits.  She was also raised Buddhist and respects all life and faiths. 

Her family finally escaped and went to the Philippines.  They had to wait for an American sponsor to leave and their sponsor eventually took them all to Texas.  Eventually, she left Texas, went to California, and is now here in Virginia.  She and her family are American citizens and she said to me, "We live in the best country." 

Trini's story helped validate the information I read in Inside Out & Back Again.  I am grateful that I was exposed to this story and was then able to share with Trini. 

Thanhha Lai blog entry
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Lily's Crossing

Author:  Patricia Reilly Giff
Published:  1997
Newbery Honor Book

Had this book been written when I was a child, I would have read it and loved it.  I played out in the "woods" in our backyard at Andrews Air Force Base.  I spent my summers jumping over the creek, climbing trees, and pretending with my friends that we were in a fantasy world.  Lily, the main character, is that kind of girl.  She made up stories about her aunt being a spy and the neighbor was a Nazi spy, she pretended to be an author, she snuck into movie theaters to watch movies without having to pay, she swam out in the ocean and paddled around in a boat.  I liked reading about her life.

Lily has an exciting life with a father, Poppy, who loves her, and a grandmother who cares for her, but she cannot remember her mother who died because she "had something wrong with her heart.  It was too big.  She died right in Poppy's bedroom on a sunny day."

Lily does not really have friends until the summer that she meets Albert.  She had another summer friend, Margaret, but Lily considered her perfect because Margaret didn't really know Lily.  Margaret didn't know that Lily was terrible in school, told lies, and didn't have any other friends.  Lily and Margaret start the summer off together, but Margaret must leave because her father is going to work on bombers in Detroit.  Soon after D-Day, Margaret's brother Eddie, who is fighting in France, cannot be accounted for.  The family cannot bear to return to the summer house, but Lily has managed to make another friend, a true friend, Albert.

Albert had been Hungary and had to escape at the last minute because his parents had been writing a newspaper that was against Hitler.  He and his sister, Ruth escape to France.  Ruth becomes ill and is taken to a convent to live while she recovers, but Albert continues his escape to Canada and then the United States.  Albert worries for Ruth and wants to find a way back to France to be with her.

Lily's father is an engineer and he agrees to enlist so that he can help with the rebuilding process.  Lily must spend the summer with her grandmother at the summer house.

During the summer, Lily and Albert form a strong relationship.  Lily agrees to teach Albert to swim so that he is able to swim to one of the boats that passes by on its way to France for the war.  Albert wants to get on a ship and find his way to Ruth.  Lily promises to teach Albert to swim and then she will go with him so she can find her father in France too.  Lily knows she is lying to Albert, but she cannot help herself.  She loves to lie, or really just make-up exciting stories. 

At the end of the summer Lily returns to her home and to school.  She is no longer the bad student because she has a teacher who supports her amazing imagination.  "Sister Benedicta had told he that all writers did that [day-dreamed] and that as long as you knew the difference between lies and daydreams you were in good shape." 

During the school year Poppy returns.  While he was in France he had the opportunity to meet Ruth because Lily had written about her.  Ruth was waiting for the war to end to go to Canada and be with Albert again. 

Once school is over, Poppy, Lily, and her grandmother return to the summer house.  Margaret is still not there, but Albert has returned and this time he is with someone else, Ruth.

This book is very different from Prisoner B-3087 because it is told from a different point-of-view.  This is the point-of-view of a girl who misses her father because he is at war and it is about how she grows and matures because of her experiences and new friendships.  There is a daily fear of losing a loved one and not knowing whether the loved one is safe.  I used to teach at a school made up of all military children.  It reminded me of all of the deployed parents and how my children struggled through the school year without mom or dad to tuck them in, watch the grade-level shows, or even just help with homework.  I think military children (around 5th grade) would relate to Lily and enjoy reading about someone in a similar situation.  Lily's Crossing ends with a note from the author.  She writes, "I wanted to tell my readers that even though the times are different now, people have always worried about the same things...loss and separation, the future, and sometimes war.  I want readers to know that love and friendship make a difference."   This book is similar to  Prisoner B-3087 because we encounter the same themes.  Yanek lost everything because of war, he missed his parents, and had to figure out what to do with his future after the war.  I worried about my dad in the military as a child, I worry about my own boys and their future, and my students still suffer and struggle with missing parents because of deployments, separations, divorce, ... These are things that we all can relate to because they are things we all struggle with regardless of age or culture.

As I read this book, something seemed so familiar.  This book was published in 1997, so I know it wasn't that I had read this book as a child.  I know that as I child I had read something similar.  I did some research and found another book, The Summer of My German Soldier.  I cannot remember exactly what this book was about.  I remember that a girl hid a German soldier in her attic.  She was keeping a secret from those around her.  Like Lily, helping keep the secret that she and Albert were going to escape to France.  I ordered the book and should get it tomorrow.  I seem to remember enjoying the book.  I'm looking forward to reading it and seeing if there are any ties to the two stories.  I'll let you know.

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Rules

Author:  Cynthia Lord
Published:   2006

I sat down to read this book from beginning to end.  I chose this book for two reasons:  it is a Newberry Honor book and it has also won the Schneider Family Book Award.  I was killing two birds with one stone.  I had seen this book before, but the cover did not draw me in.  Now that I know what the cover is, I love it.  I have to stop letting covers dictate what I read.

I asked my husband to look at the cover and to predict what the book was about.  I wanted to see if what he thought would be enough to make me want to read the book.  Ummm no.  He said, "It looks like a game at a carnival.  I bet you have to pick up the duck and check what's written on the bottom to see if you win the goldfish."  So I asked, "Why is the duck saying "RULES"?"  He responded, "Carnival games have rules!"  Okay, no wonder I didn't want to read the book before.  I'm glad I did though.

There is nothing about carnivals in this book.  This story is told by Catherine, a young girl who wants to enjoy her summer and meet a new friend, Kristi, who will swim with her and send Morse code messages back and forth with flashlights.  The only problem is that Catherine has a brother, David, and David has autism.  Catherine loves her brother and has come up with a list of rules for him.  At first you think she has rules so that he doesn't embarrass her, but really, Catherine does not want others to treat David differently. (Examples of rules are:  no toys in the aquarium (see the cover of the book) and don't take your pants off in front of others.) She wants everything and everyone to be "normal."  Interestingly, Catherine learns that normal is not what she thinks.  She befriends a boy, Jason, a paraplegic, at David's occupation therapy sessions.  I see Jason as Catherine's closest friend, but Catherine doesn't see it like that.  She wants to treat Jason like he is "normal," but really she does not and comes to realize that she is doing to him what she does not want others doing to her own brother.  Catherine tries to hide her brother's autism and Jason's handicap from Kristi, and ends up isolating her friends.  Catherine eventually learns to open up and speak up about her feelings to her parents, Kristi, and Jason.  She also realizes that accepting each others' differences is okay, and it is not her problem if others cannot accept the differences.

I read this book and thought of autistic students I have taught.  I want so badly to know what is in their heads. I want them to understand that I may not always understand them and may understand things the wrong way, but I really want to.  What I have always been amazed with is that my students have always been so understanding of my students with autism.  I'm amazed at how supportive they are of each other.  I hope it's like this everywhere.  I know it isn't.  A few years ago I was at a museum and I saw a child with a sticker on his shirt.  The sticker had written on it, "Be patient with me, I have autism."  I felt sorry for the parents and for the child.  I didn't feel like that parent had to explain anything to me, but they felt like they did, so the sticker. I felt sorry for the child, he had probably not always been given nice looks because of the way he behaved.  The only way he knew or was able to express himself.  Everyone needs to read this book and needs to learn compassion and understanding.  People need to learn that before coming to a conclusion they should think there might a reason for the way someone is behaving and it is not for us to judge.

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Learn about Cynthia Lord.