THIS BIG SKY by Pat Mora

Author Pat Mora
Photo by http://www.ncte.org/

Mora, Pat. 1998. THIS BIG SKY. Ill. by Steve Jenkins. New York: Scholastic Press. ISBN 0590371207

Review

With fourteen poems, Mora brings life to the American Southwest.  Deserts, coyotes, snakes, raccoons, and the hot sun, are just a few of the mentioned characters in Mora’s poems. 

A multicultural book, Mora includes Spanish words and provides a glossary of these terms at the end.  She uses words like “vibora” and “paisano” to bring the culture and environment to life in a different way.   It grabs the reader’s attention and either connects with them or intrigues them.  Her poem, Suspense, is a good use of onomatopoeia as the words make you feel the action.  “Plink, plink,” “splatter” and “splash” show the rain and its presence.  I can read this poem and transport myself to this place. These poems do not necessarily rhyme but the stories they tell make it easy to picture them.  Urban Raccoon is another favorite of mine in this collection.  Her use of the five-senses makes it hard to read through without seeping into the story.  In this poem, you feel it and hear it with phrases like “strrrrretch onto the roof” and “scratch, scratch, scratches.”  The reader can almost touch the raccoon as you read about her thick coat/ringed tail/rubs her roundness/pudgy lady. It makes me want to curl up in bed!  The illustrations are vibrant, clean, and textured.  The way they are cut and placed together adds dimension and their effect on the senses. 

The tone of Mora’s poetry in this book is of intoxication.  An environment sometimes portrayed as barren and negative, Mora’s tone is the opposite.  I sense her amazement and wonder in the poems.  Each poem carefully highlights a different aspect of the Southwest.  

Poetry in Action:

Introducing the Poem:  Take students on a nature walk and have them document, in pairs, the things they see including plants, living things, the sky, and the weather.

Follow up Activity:  While still sitting outside and having read the poem, have students revisit their list of things they see and have them add to or rewrite them in more descriptive, sense-provoking ways.  Give them examples of “boil purple” and “prickly cactus.”  Then compare their first words to their later words to see OR FEEL the difference. 

Suspense

Wind chases itself

Around our house, flattens

Wild grasses

With one hot breath.

Clouds boil purple

and gray, roll

and roil. Scorpions

dart

under stones. Rabbit eyes peer

from the shelter of mesquite.

Thorny silence.

My paisano, the road runner,

paces, dashes into the rumble.

races from the plink, plink

splatter into his shadow,    leaps

at the crash   flash

splash,

sky rivers rushing into arroyos and

thirsty roots of prickly pears,

greening cactus.