Zombies! Evacuate the School!
Book Trailer
Is school turning you into a Zombie? Are you tired of filling in boxes? Do you long to find your individual voice? This is the book that will help! Poetry and writing tips for kids ages 9-12.
Writing prompts and mini poetry lessons throughout introduce readers to many of the elements of poetry and invite kids to write poems of their own.
Show the world that poetry was never meant to simply lie quietly on the page, any more than kids were meant to sit quietly in their seats to read it.
Kirkus Reviews: (starred) Guaranteed to get even confirmed classroom drones out of their seats and into an audience's face, this high-energy manual is a poetry slam-dunk, combining plenty of easy practice pieces "The guinea pig has fleas, / there are grass stains on my knees, /AND IT'S ALL MY FAULT?" with pithy advice about voice, gesture, rhythm, and other aspects of solo, paired, and choral performance. Except for a closing note to adult "coordinators," Holbrook (Walking on The Boundaries of Change: Poems of Transition, 1999) addresses young "jammers" directly, delivering a mix of practical tips and inspirational exhortation, inviting experimentation with the original examples she provides, emphasizing that attitude and technique are equally important, and finishing with suggested rules for poetry competitions.
Sometimes I don't even know what my feelings are until I start to write about them. Each poem in this book defines a different feeling: Procrastination, Adreneline, and getting stuck in a Pout.
From School Library Journal: Grade 4-7-A wide range of emotions that preadolescents and young teens must cope with, such as anger, mistrust, disappointment, jealousy, honesty, and loneliness, are addressed in these 40 brief poems. About half can be found in collections previously published by Wordsong. For the most part, the selections deal lightly, often glibly, with these subjects. Sketchy, black-and-white cartoonlike illustrations match the upbeat tone and keep the material from becoming too weighty.
School Library Journal: Gr 3-6-Typical childhood and adolescent miseries-having to wear glasses and braces; getting up early; embarrassing moments at school; losing at try-outs; forgetting things; coping with grown-ups, crushes, siblings-are the subjects of these 40 light verses, most of which are written in rhymed (sometimes forced) meter. Humorous pen-and-ink sketches accompany most of the selections. This collection is reminiscent of Judith Viorst's If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries (Atheneum, 1981)
Poems for primary students about loosing a first tooth, T Ball, soccer and other topics.
School Library Journal: The poet's inventive wordplay and bouncy rhythms give some of the short pieces a surprising punch, as in these two examples from Which Way: "The lightning show/is followed by/dramatic pause./The clouds applaud" and "I saw it all./Bird walk./Cat stalk./Pounce./Squawk./Close call." Creative teachers might use these poems to show their students that poetry can be about the most mundane topics.
Teacher Christine Landaker: I am an eighth grade English teacher, and I've worked in both Florida and Massachusetts. In both places, and in other places where I have had the fortune to work with children, Sara's poetry has captured their attention and wowed them with her understanding of their age. Her "silly rhymes" make them giggle and her "I am a teenager and my life is like this" poems make them jump for joy that someone knows what it is like to be in middle school (or elementary school, or high school). I have all of her books in my classroom, and have to replace them often because they are stolen: the highest compliment a student can make to a poet. I love Sara!
Teacher Daryl Anderson: Holbrook writes poetry for young people in the 10-15 age range. As a teacher of 6th graders, I think they are a 'demographic group' that sometimes must feel invisilble. Not for lack of being marketed-at and sold-to, though. Invisible because they are always being asked to don the personae of either "child" or "teenager". Usually they are neither, and often they seem to find the cultural fit and expectations of these to be ill-matched to their inner lives. It is rare to find anything, books included, that fit comfortably. Holbrook's work fits.
