Robert Louis Stevenson

I love children's poetry.  I've been reading Stevenson's A  Child's Garden of Verses again.  Three poems that I read today are wonderful for toddlers.  When my grandson first noticed his shadow, I took the chance to say the first verse of "The Shadow" to him.  "The Swing" is for trips to the park.  And when toddlers and pre-schoolers question why they have to go to bed when it's still light out, "Bed in Summer" is perfect.  I'm usually pretty good at remembering first verses.  I'll go back to the poems I want to memorize to the end.

When I first started teaching high school English, I was surprised at how excited students were to read and learn poetry.  I had expected a collective boredom based on a rather general sense in society that poetry isn't read anymore.  During my entire teaching career, I found that students memorized poetry easily and enjoyed reading and discussing it.

Once time in the book room  to check out novels, I asked my ninth graders to quiet down.  "You can talk," I said, "but soft."  The students chimed in, "...what light through yonder window breaks."  We'd memorized parts of Romeo and Juliet earlier in the year, and the students had already made Shakespeare's words a part of who they were.  Reading and quoting poetry to very young children has the same effect, even if they can't yet verbalize what they've learned.  It's a great gift to give them.

MONDAY'S POEM: LEXI'S PUDDLE

Lexi's Puddle

Wet Puddle,

Here I am.

I have elbows,

And here they are.

Do you feel me here?

I can feel you.

You make me wonder.

I look inside you

And find all your stories.

                                 Anne Knowles

              Photo by Canedy Knowles

 

Querying an Agent

I'm getting ready to query an agent for my middle grade novel The Knocklepockles and the Great Move.  I've been working on it for seven years.  I met the agent at the recent SCBWI-LA Writers' Day Conference in Pasadena.  Great conference by the way!  Despite the many years I've worked on the book, the hardest part of the process was writing a one page synopsis.  It took me a month and I agonized about it.  It's done except for some feedback.

Reading to Babies

My grandson is 17 months old and he loves to read.  His parents read to him from the beginning.  When he was four months old, I started babysitting every week for 2 1/2 days.  After our daily morning walks, we always had reading time.  We sat in front of the bookcase on the floor where my grandson is sitting in the picture above.  Because he couldn't sit up at the time, I put him on my lap and we looked at books.

As a retired language teacher (English and English Language Development), I know that babies need to hear written language.  Because written and spoken language are different, reading to a baby is the best way to help him or her learn the English they will need in elementary school, middle school, high school, and college.  When I taught writing to high school students, the most daunting task (aside from getting kids to do their homework) was to help students learn how to write differently from how they talk.  Even for native English speakers, it was like learning a new language.

Reading to babies helps them in many ways.  It helps develop imagination.  It helps babies make a connection between books and real world.  It helps them learn to focus.  And, of course, it helps them learn the sound and the grammar of the English needed for school.

Best of all reasons to read:  IT'S FUN!

Nursery Rhymes and Poetry

My mother read nursery rhymes to my brothers and sisters and me out of a blue and gray book.  Those nursery rhymes are my earliest memories of literature.  Even at a very early age I had favorites:  "Bye Baby Bunting" and "Mary Mary Quite Contrary."  Some of them baffled me:  I didn't understand the sarcasm in A Diller A Dollar.  As for Peter putting his wife in a pumpkin shell--it seemed slimy to me.

Nursery rhymes are a wonderful way to introduce babies to rhythm, humor, imagination, and language.  Most of us have a number of them memorized already, so it's easy to pass them on to the infants in our care as we rock them.  When my grandson was old enough to start looking at nursery rhymes in a book, I emphasized the rhythm.  Sometimes I clapped along.  He's a very active toddler, so I read them as fast as he wants to turn the page.

I've also used poetry with my grandson to help him connect the beauty of the words with the real world.  When he was five months old, I noticed he was captivated by the effect of wind in the leaves, so I recited Christina Rossetti's "Who Has Seen the Wind" to him.  He's a year older now and I've recited that poem to him each time I noticed his fascination with the wind.  One time, when he'd first started walking, he gave me a smile, then walked over to a bush.  He shook a branch and, like the wind, he made the leaves dance.  Two weeks ago, we were outside in a strong breeze.  He looked up into  leaves and laughed.  When he looked back at me, I recited "Who Has Seen the Wind."  For the first time, I knew he was listening to the words.  His eyes never left mine.  He already recognized the poem as belonging to his joy in nature.

There are a number of poems that are easy to memorize.  The books I'd recommend are Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, Caroline Kennedy's book A Family of Poems, and A.A. Milne's When We Were Very Young.  I find collections of children's poetry in antique stores and used book stores.  If a book is under five dollars, I snatch it up.

Finally, I believe it's important to have a "with-it-ness" with a very young child.  We're all busy, but being open to and aware of what a child is experiencing for the first time in life can help us call up those wonderful nursery rhymes and poems that might enrich the child's life.

Posted 6 minutes ago by Anne Knowles

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