Happy Birthday Tribute! #PoetryFriday #NPM #NaPoWriMo

Happy National Poetry Month and Poetry Friday! Haiku high priestess, Robyn Hood Black, is kindly hosting us today over at Life on the Deckle Edge. But wait! There’s more!

This month I am tagging along with poet/author Amy Ludwig VanDerwater during what has become her annual NPM Project. You can click here to learn more about this straight from Amy! This year she is writing and sharing a new poem every day, each highlighting a different poetic technique, but keeping the same subject. Her challenge, 1 Subject 30 Ways, is also a bit of an informal book study, as she’s using her fall 2017 release Poems Are Teachers (Heinemann) as her guide. Join us!

Today’s poetic technique chosen by Amy is simile. My subject is, and will be all month long, vernal pools. The image that came to me was of an elementary school emptying out in the summer, only to fill up again with friends old and new in the fall — like a vernal pool. Here’s a poem nugget, or tadpole. Not fully metamorphosized just yet.

And still more! Today I’m sticking with my vernal pool theme from Amy’s challenge, but also joining my fellow poetry lovers in wishing a Very Happy Birthday to Mr. Lee Bennett Hopkins, poet extraordinaire! In honor of his birthday today, I’m celebrating with a wonderful poem of his, Under the Microscope, from his anthology, Spectacular Science: A Book of Poems (illustrated by Virginia Halstead, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1999) and introducing my tribute poem, Under our Stereoscope. Here’s Lee’s original poem.

My vernal pool-loving Kindergarten scientists have been having a blast looking at the microscopic creatures who make their home in our campus vernal pool — while it lasts — under our classroom stereoscope.

And now presenting…Under our Stereoscope!

Happy Birthday, Lee, for all the poetry love you have shared with the world over the years! And many thanks to Brenda Davis Harsham at Friendly Fairy Tales, who has been following along my vernal pool journey this month, for nudging me in the direction of this all-things-science anthology!

I also hope you will stop by Live Your Poem daily to follow along the journey of the 2018 KidLit Progressive Poem, a fun annual collaborative project lovingly begun in 2012 by poet/author Irene Latham. The poem will magically, and quite literally this year, be growing right before our eyes daily during the month of April. This year we are following along the journey of Jasmine and her companions Moon and Owl. Jasmine has taken off on a journey with Owl by the light of the moon. The process is fascinating and this year I am diving in for the first time with a line right in the middle of the month — April 18th.

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This post is part of my personal National Poetry Month celebration. I hope you’ll join me in sharing your favorite poetic gems throughout the month of April whether they are written by you, your students, or another poet.