Cool, Smart Poetry: Booktalk 3

Poets can get away with stuff that non-poets can’t. For example, only a poet would think about what trees dream about at night. One of my favorite poems in this collection is called “The Oak Trees Are Dreaming” by Patricia Hubbell, and I got to hear her read it on the CD that comes with the book. Hearing her read it made the poem come alive for me. Back to poets getting away with stuff. Only a poet could write an ode to a termite who caused your Cousin May to fall through the floor today. And only a poet could write an obituary for a clam that lived and died 300 million years ago. And only a poet could compare a bear in a zoo to a lost child in the woods. And only a poet could explain to you why everything that lives wants to fly. The great thing about a treasury of poetry like this one is that it has something for everyone. You are guaranteed to find at least a few poems that you really love. The Tree that Time Built: [Poems] Selected by Mary Anne Hoberman and Linda Winston.

The Tree that Time Built: [Poems] Selected by Mary Anne Hoberman and Linda Winston. 209 p., includes index, glossary, and accompanying audio CD. Sourcebooks, Inc, 2009. Booktalk to elementary school [grades 3-5] and to middle school.

Awesome Arctic: Booktalk 3

Even though fourteen-year-old Alika hasn’t been a teenager for long, he’s an accomplished Inuit seal hunter, and he his family live about as close as humans live to the North Pole in 1868. Seal hunting is a way of life to the Inuit people, and Alika and his younger brother, Sulu, have traveled to the edge of a thick ice floe which is attached to land. It’s the time of the long winter darkness, and Alika and Sulu have come by ice sledge led by their dogs. Their lead sledge dog, Jamka, has sniffed out a seal hole, and Alika sees his chance to wait for the seal to pop up to the surface and provide them with the food they so badly need for the long, dark, frigid winter. But Alika is starting to push his luck: it looks as if a gale is coming, and their village of Nunatak is seven miles away. Alika’s ancestors have been living in this neck of the woods for thousands and thousands of years, and all children are taught to hunt, to build iglus, to predict the thickness of ice over water, to fight off polar bear attacks, and to survive sub-zero weather. If they’re not taught this at a young age, they’ll die. Remember: the Arctic is a formidable foe. It has lots of tricks up its sleeve, and it had one trick that Alika did not see coming: ice floes can break away from the land they’ve attached themselves to. They’re like big ice rafts, basically, and Alika watches in horror as he and his young brother and their dogs are suddenly adrift at sea, all alone on an ice floe: Ice Drift by Theodore Taylor.

Ice Drift by Theodore Taylor. 224 p. Harcourt, 2005. Booktalk to intermediate grades, middle school, even early high school.

Awesome Arctic: Booktalk 2

You have to be really, really tough -- physically and mentally -- to want to reach the North Pole, especially if you did it the old-fashioned way [by boat, dog sled, and your own two feet], as African-American explorer Matthew Henson did. Matthew Henson had always been a determined, adventurous young man. When he was only 13 years old, he walked forty miles completely on his own to Baltimore in order to get a job. He discovered that he loved sailing, adventure, and travel. When he met a young naval lieutenant named Robert Edwin Peary in 1887, it would change his life. He traveled with Peary to the jungles of Nicaragua, and later they started traveling to the Arctic. Explorers tend to dream big, and Robert Peary was no exception. He wanted to be the first man to reach the North Pole, and he asked Henson to come along and be his assistant. This began years of their working as a team to reach the pole. Peary was lucky to have such a brave and loyal helper. Henson gave up much of his life and his personal safety to accompany Peary on these long, often fruitless expeditions. During one, Henson had gone ahead. He was fairly close to the Pole, but he was on thin ice, and he and his dogs plunged into the icy water. If Henson had not been pulled out by a native Inuit man who had accompanied them, he would have died. Peary never wanted to give up, because he was in competition with another man, Dr. Frederick Cook, to be the first man to reach the true North Pole. Eventually, Peary was declared the winner, but sadly enough, Matthew Henson did not receive much credit or glory at the time for his help in the victory. Happily, some of that has been rectified today. Read more about this fascinating man, Matthew Henson, in Onward: a Photobiography of African-American Polar Explorer Matthew Henson by Dolores Johnson.

Onward: a Photobiography of African-American Polar Explorer Matthew Henson by Dolores Johnson. 64 p. National Geographic Society, 2006. Booktalk to intermediate, middle school, even high school.

Cool Brainiacs: Booktalk 3

Not all brainiacs are math and science geniuses. Sometimes a brainiac is just a smart person who thinks of a brilliant solution to a problem - a solution which no one else has thought of. Mama Miti was that kind of brainiac. She was born and partially raised in Kenya -- in Africa, and during her lifetime, she started to see Kenya getting sick: poverty, scarce drinking water, not enough food, lack of jobs, and the growing disappearance of nature. It scared her, and it saddened her, too. People had been trying to think of solutions, but nothing was working. Mama Miti had an idea: get the local people in villages and tribes to plant more trees, even if it just meant starting with one tree. One tree? You'd be amazed what good things can come from a tree. It can be shelter from the burning sun, it can provide food, it can protect watersheds, and it can protect animals. A tree is a starting point for many good things. The tree movement she started was called the Green Belt movement. It has helped many people and villages in Africa. She had an elegantly simple idea. So, remember: a brainiac can use her brain to help thousands of people, just as Mama Miti did, in this fabulous book called Mama Miti by Donna Jo Napoli.

[Booktalkers: Much of this I got from Mama Miti's [a.k.a. Wangari Maathai] memoir called Unbowed: A Memoir, available in many libraries. If you're booktalking to high schoolers or adults, you might consider using Unbowed.]