A Library Poem: The Poetry Friday Anthology

I was so excited that Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell chose my poem to illustrate a brochure about their fabulous resource, The Poetry Friday Anthology.  In case you haven't heard about it, it contains 36 poems for each elementary grade level so teachers can introduce a new poem every Friday all year long.  And along with the poems are gentle lesson ideas.  By gentle, I mean the authors don't suggest you dissect the poor poems and use the pieces to choke the creative life out of kids.

Here is a suggestion to go with this poem (can you tell this came a librarian?  Not just any book geek either, librarian extraordinaire Sylvia Vardell).

"And here's an idea for a 5 minute activity: Challenge kids to pick a topic on this list that they are probably NOT interested in, to find a book on that subject, to flip through it for 1 minute-- and then to share one neat little thing that they just read or saw."

Here is another fact you might want to share...this poem was once rejected by an editor who told me flatly, "Sara, this is not your best work."  I mention this to inspire those who may be discouraged by the entire submission process (me included) to keep trying.

While I'm passing out compliments, let me also say that Janet Wong is a terrific editor, as well as a stellar poet.