Reading Journal March 28, 2011

Poetry by Heart: A Child’s Book of Poems to Remember
Compiled by Liz Attenborough
Foreward by Andrew Motion, poet laureate, UK
The Chicken House, Scholastic, Inc.
Copyright 2001
124 pages

Wide ranging in subject matter, depth, length, and age-level, this collection contains many poems by “anonymous” and poems by Shakespeare, Yeats, Langston Hughes, Edward Lear and many more. From Limericks such as THREE LITTLE OWLS WHO SANG HYMNS:

There were three little owls in a wood
Who sang hymns whenever they could;
What the words were about
One could never make out,
But one felt it was doing them good.
Anonymous

to the wordplay of A FLY AND A FLEA:

A fly and a flea in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, ‘let us flee!’
‘Let us fly!’ said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
Anonymous

to WALKING THE DOG SEEMS LIKE FUN TO ME:

I said, The dog wants a walk.

Mum said to Dad, It’s your turn.
Dad said, I always walk the dog.
Mom said, Well I walked her this morning.
Dad said, She’s your dog.
I didn’t want a dog in the first place.

Mum said, It’s your turn.

Dad stood up and threw the remote control
At the pot plant.
Dad said, I’m going down the pub.
Mum said, Take the dog.

Dad shouted, No way!
Mum shouted, You’re going nowhere!

I grabbed Judy’s lead
and we both bolted out the back door.

The stars were shining like diamonds.
Judy sniffed at a hedgehog, rolled up in a ball.
She ate a discarded kebab on the pavement.
She tried to chase a cat that ran up a tree.

Walking the dog
seems like fun to me.
Roger Stevens

this collection is full of poems I want to keep close by me.

Changing Gears

One of the things I have learned (as I go) is that it is really hard to keep a blog. For me writing a blog is in direct competition with keeping a journal. I write my journal by hand, with a Pelikan fountain pen and special Pelikan Fount India Ink. I write only for myself--I rarely share my journals--and I try not to censor my thoughts or think of an audience other than myself. My journals are a conversation I am having with myself and in them I explore many issues and problems, projects and ideas. I organize my days, my life, my thoughts. I store my best ideas.

By the time I get to writing my blog, I am tapped out. I am overly aware that this is a public space, whether I have a real audience or not, and I lose my true voice and start to bore even myself. So I am changing gears, taking this blog in a different direction for now.

I read a great article in the SCBWI National Bulletin about keeping a reading log. It was suggested that you keep track of the title, author/illustrator, publisher, date, and editor and/or agent if possible (often the editor or agent is mentioned in the acknowledgments--more likely in a novel than in a shorter book). Then write about the book--what captured your interest, or, if you lost interest, why was that. The point, of course, is to read with the eye of a writer. So I have decided to keep my Reader's Log here, on my blog. This is just one more way I am learning as I go.