Review
It’s personification to the extreme! For this book, Janeczko selects poems written in voices of objects and creatures like washing machines, gloves, cats, and cows. It’s not common to read about a vacuum cleaner taking revenge on everything found on the floor! Playful illustrations compliment the out-of-the-ordinary poetry and create a tone and mood that’s carefree, fun, and light-hearted. Common rhyme is used at the end of the sentences. For example, in the first poem SHELL by Deborah Chandra, sentences end with “ear/where/hear.” WINTER WIND by Judith Pacht rhymes words such as “bore/floor/door” and “play/way/stay/away.” Author Marilyn Singer uses rhyme, repetition, adding on, assonance, and sense imagery in her poem, TURTLE IN JULY. She uses vocabulary that makes the reader feel the hot July like “thick/sticky/icky” and the relief in a “cool pool.” PLEA OF THE OLD HORSE ON LOOKING THROUGH THE KTICHEN WINDOW by Patricia Hubbell uses the same techniques. She uses sense words such as “winter/warm/cold/dampness/shivering/blanket.” The reader can really feel what the horse is going through.
The authors use different forms for the poetry. THE MOSQUITO’S SONG by Peggy B. Leavitt is concrete as it is shaped like a mosquito. THE VACUUM CLEANER’S REVENGE by Patricia Hubbell is written in couplets along with SCARECROW’S DREAM by Nina Nyhart. The varied forms, characters, and approaches will hardly be noticed by readers as they delve into the charming stories of different voices!
Poetry in Action:
Introducing the Poem: Ask students if they’ve ever seen a movie or television show with one of the characters being something that isn’t alive in real life. Examples could be Spongebob or Handy Manny’s tools. Then, explain personification.
During the reading Activity: This book would work really well with the brown bag activity where the teacher has items in a brown bag to pull out at particular times. These items correspond to the poems. The teacher could have a pair of gloves, box of crayons, kite, scarecrow, small broom, and a real conch shell for students to pass around. Beside the door where students walk in the librarian or teacher could have the large items on display with big bug eyes attached for visual curiosity like a vacuum or one of the large animals in paper like the bear, cow, or whale.
After Reading Activity: For young students, provide large diamond shaped paper and colorful streamers and yarn for the string and help students construct a kite. On the kite, have them write words that are associated with flying a kite like air, clouds, sky, trees, wind, string, summertime, fields, and so on.
Another activity could be to guide students through writing their own poem using personification. Students could use paper to cut and create the character and then write their poem on the “thing” to be hung in the hallway or in library.
I’M UP HERE
By Karla Kuskin
I’m up here.
You’re down there.
And nothing in that space between us
But a mile of air.
Where I sail:
Clouds pass.
Where you run:
Green grass.
Where I float:
Birds sing.
One thin thing there is
That holds us close together:
Kite string.
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