Haunted

Have you tried making "found poetry"?  Excellent to do with your book club, or as a school assignment, choose a number of words you like from a book you are reading, and see if you can put them together in a new way as a poem. 

 You may find your poem still tends to reflect themes in the book, an interesting consideration for authors on word choice.  Alternatively your poem may turn out to say something other, deeper, darker.   You may also find as I did, to my utter surprise, that even in found poetry, not everyone gets it; there are poets out there even if supplied with others' words, and people who see the world, perhaps, in a more concrete or less verbal fashion, and may struggle a little with the concept.  An alternative assignment, rather than asking your poets to choose words, is to give a passage from which they redact words, black out words with a marker, and then read what words are left.  This also makes something visual to look at, with the black stripes, so has an appeal for the more visual art oriented.  

Please remember to attribute the original author.  I made mine with words from Allison Mills's The Ghost Collector, a juvenile chapter book.  I think a found poem is a nice review of, or plug for, a book.

Here's mine:

                                                                    Haunted 

                                                        River, shivering

                                                        plastered, soaked

                                                        Water, heavy, dirt.

                                                        Drizzling, gray, sad.

                                                        Young.

                                                        Focus--change--

                                                        I don't understand what happened--

                                                        Confusing

                                                        flickering

                                                        Ghost.

                                                        Do you know my name?

 

Words are not Eternal; Finding Truth in Fairy Tales

 

Interior of a Kitchen, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Given in memory of Eliphalet Fraser Andrews.  CCO.

Lao Tzu teaches that words, once articulated, cannot be eternal.  The words of human language are mere signposts to inner understanding of hints of the truth. 

Writers know that the words from the Muse for which we are conduits will have meaning yet to be discovered by readers.  

I wrote down my own remembered and imagined versions of a few fairy tales because I wanted one little boy to know them.  I discovered, as I usually do in writing, meanings after they were written. In Heart’s Desire I remade three tales with the common theme of a miraculous child discovered and adopted by childless adults.  

“Gingerbread Kid” is just for fun, but sets up the theme:  we are not the Creator of our children, and they are not going to turn out to be mere cookie cutter people of our design and intent!  

“The Flower Fairy Prince and Princess”, from Hans Christian Andersen’s Thumbelina inspiration, dictated its own themes of the challenge in communication and relationship between the big human mother and the tiny flower child, and the tension between the mother’s worry about the child’s safety, and the tiny one’s longing for freedom and discovery.  

Finally “”The Snow Child", inspired by the Russian Snow Maiden, is icy cold, even while she is eager to please and to be the perfect child.  She reminds me of having read about a psychological syndrome in some adopted children, especially related to the eastern European orphaned children who had not been loved early; some are apparently perfectly behaved, but cold and unloving, to their parents’ horror.  She also reminds me of the challenge to parents of children with autism, and the especially sensitive children who cannot bear touch.

The little boy of today's remarks became delighted with the novel experience of  fairy tales being read to him as chapter books at bedtime, instead of merely single story picture books. Now he says, yeah, fairy tales, every night!  

And by the way, at first our little boy assumed that “fairy tales” are stories exclusively about “fairies”, and this made him doubtful.   We explained that fairy tales are just old tales, retold many times and many ways over many years, which may include magic,royalty, transformation, travels, animals, and even ordinary boys and girls.  One may read them for fun, one may find lessons within.

 Rediscover the joy of the many layers of meaning in fairy tales, making them entertaining for all ages.  Find humor, fantasy and adventure for little ones, archetypes and motifs Jungian or Freudian for adults, simple and profound lessons for all. 

On reflection, it seems the Heart's Desire tales, like Hungry Kids, Hansel & Gretel and Jack and the Beans, are my found and adopted children, not so much created but discovered.

Heart's Desire: Fairy Tales for the Family

Why buy easy readers?

Why invest in easy reader books?


I know folks who get a good laugh from comedian Brian Regan’s routine about missing the subtext of four-page baby books (http://www.cc.com/video-clips/kaedzf/baby-books):

“The clock.
The big clock.
Tick, tock.
The end.
Twelve dollars.”

Funny!

Would you assess easy readers this way too? For us adults, once we read a book we are done with
it. There are some we keep on our shelves because they are gorgeous collector items, and some to show off what we read. There are a few we just treasure and even re-read, perhaps annually, perhaps “someday”. Honestly, a book which costs five to twelve dollars which you read once to your kid? Once mastered,--read once-- don’t you want to move on? Wouldn’t it cost you a fortune to maintain a full enough library of easy readers, when your new reader will soon be ripping through and past these?


Well that children's book may not be so interesting to you after the first reading, but it is in fact crucially important to give your newly reading child the opportunity to read and re-read the same books, over and over. It is important that you permit your child to choose the same favorite book from the library, week after week. It is important that you read the same story requested, again and again and again. This is actually how children learn.

Your reader needs multiple opportunities to sound out, say, and hear the same words. Her inner ear is listening and embedding relationships between letters, between words, learning contexts, thinking about vocabulary and how to use and apply those words in other contexts. He is downloading grammar lessons and intuiting spelling rules. He will learn to play with these words.

Your reader needs to build the confidence of gradually reading that story, more and more smoothly,
again and again, until it is a basic on which she can rely, with assurance, to entertain a grandparent or younger sibling.

Yes, your reader is even memorizing the story. You may be dismissive, thinking it is a lazy way out of reading, to merely remember the words which go with the picture hints.

Memorization was once recognized as a valuable skill in education. Thankfully it has been replaced on its altar by critical thinking. Nevertheless memorization is also a tool in your child’s mental facilities. Once, literate people had been trained in memorizing and reciting poetry, Latin, catechism. Once even folks without access to advanced formal education had so learned the richly complex vocabulary to enjoy literature and theater, and to make and understand political arguments.

My daughter talked late as a toddler, but she demanded I read and reread aloud the entire Jungle Book by Kipling. When she did finally talk, she was able to recite it. ( If you don’t know the original Jungle Book stories, read it for the gorgeous music of the language and the fascinating political lessons and issues taught and learned by Bagheera, Baloo and Mowgli. What, then, does one need to know to live within, or without, a civilization?)

When she was able to write, she wrote poetically with a natural, beautiful voice, based on her Jungle Book's silent practice in her head.

Fortunately Kipling bore up to many repeated readings by an adult, without ever boring. Even with children’s picture books and easy readers I am a fussy audience. I want a book to have meaning to a child and not exclusively pathos for the adult, (as is sadly so common in popular children’s books!). And I want the story to have a humorous or sweetly grateful subtext for the adult. Share the laugh, let your child in on the joke! Show your pleasure in their story. Count your blessings aloud together.

Before you know it, your child will surprise you and make you laugh with connections he has learned to make, applying language and ideas from his books to new situations.

The investment in many easy readers from which to choose, for reading and rereading, is not so costly and very worthwhile. As your reader grows in ability, try sharing a box of readers with other families, rotating the stories round and back again, to expand your reader’s opportunities and tastes.

I have these right now with genuine realistic pictures, rather than more CGI graphics, since we are already sickened with so much screen time. To my mind, they are funny. Let me know what you think!

 

Start a lifelong exploration of the environment. Frog and Polliwog, (toads and tadpoles too)

 For practice with B words and D words, a common mix-up for new readers. Bee Dog on Amazon

A phonics program to help adult teachers support a new reader.  Learn to Read This Summer on Amazon.

Try this sweet, intimate peek into a family kitchen.  Grandpa's Pies