Irene Gach Lá

My daughter is an English major at UT. She composed this essay after watching American Sniper and viewing news footage of the Michael Moore 'snipers as cowards' debacle. I'm so proud of her. She represents the voice of our family, and I'm sure many Americans, with poignancy. American Sniper      What makes a man a coward? A rampant fear of the unknown? A less-than- perfect attempt at being human? An acknowledgment of failure?      Before you answer, let me paint a picture for you. You are boiling under the heat of the summer sun in one of the most desolate environments in the world. It ʼ s 3 pm and you have been lying on a rooftop for hours. Your eyes waver in and out of focus as you scan the buildings and streets below you for the slightest sign of movement. Radio calls swirl with dust around your head, signaling changes in shifts, and changes in safety. It ʼ s been six months since you have seen your parents. Your significant other is raising ...

BIBLIOGRAPHY Janeczko, Paul. 1998. THAT SWEET DIAMOND: BASEBALL POEMS. Ill. by Carole Katchen. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers. ISBN 978-0689807350 . CRITICAL ANALYSIS That Sweet Diamond: Baseball Poems is a love story to the game of baseball. It perfectly captures the experience of attending a game, from the hot dog vendors to the plays on the field to the uber-fan. There are nineteen poems, each paired with a pastel illustration by Carole Kitchen on the facing page. The illustrations have an other-worldly quality in an impressionistic format which breathes life into the movement of the game. The poems are a combination of formats, including both rhyming and nonrhyme. The rhythmn is strong, with the beats of the poem appropriately matching the action Janeczko is trying to convery in each baseball scene. Kids will especially love the poem about spit, as well as the one about the old lady who sits in Section 7, Row 1, Seat 3. Peppered throughout the poems...

BIBLIOGRAPHY Franco, Betsy, ed. (2008) Falling Hard: 100 Love Poems by Teenagers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press. CRITICAL ANALYSIS Falling Hard is a poetry compilation written by teenagers and anthologized by Betsy Franco. The poems are free verse and the kids provide a mosaic of diversity. The poems are honest, sometimes graphic. Kids share their emotions across gender, sexual orientation and race. It’s a heartfelt glimpse into the deep emotional well of the teenage mind. Adult readers will walk away with an appreciation of the complexities of teenage emotion, and perhaps a bit of nostalgia for their own memories of the teen years. The poems were primarily from kids in the United States and were submitted via e-mail to Franco. The names and ages are given with the poems. SPOTLIGHT POEM AND LESSON These poems are for high schoolers. I would not share them with a middle school or elementary audience. They are mature in both nature and theme....

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, Kwame. 2014. CROSSOVER. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 9780544107717. CRITICAL ANALYSIS I had the opportunity to listen to Kwame Alexander speak at the Texas Library Association conference in San Antonio in April 2014. He spoke on the impetus for Crossover: to write a verse novel for boys. And not just any boy, but the sports-loving, poetry-hating, I-don’t-go-to-the-library sort of boy. I was completely intrigued and knew I had to read this book, because he’s absolutely correct in noticing the gap in this genre’s niche: most verse novels are written to appeal to girls, and boys who do read verse novels are already vested in their own reading identity. But could he pull it off? I will freely admit, although I loved the cover, that I was a bit skeptical of the goal. I’m a middle school librarian, so I really wanted to meet the verse novel which could hook my sports-loving, poetry-hating, I-don’t-go-to-the-library boys into reading i...

BIBLIOGRAPHY Wong, Joyce. 2005. Seeing Emily. New York: Amulet. ISBN 0810957574 . CRITICAL ANALYSIS Seeing Emily is the best of free verse, as it captures the mind of 16-year old Chinese-American Emily. Told in a rich style reminiscent of Sonya Sones, Seeing Emily is the journey of an American teenager grappling with typical teenage angst, albeit compounded by the complexities of growing up in an immigrant family. Her parents squeeze the American dream for all its worth, working tirelessly in their family restaurant, the Golden Palace. They expect the same ambition from their daughter. Through her art, Emily views her world and its pressures. Wong invites her readers along to view Emily’s unique take on the world. In Seeing Emily, we experience her friendships with Nina and Liz, her blossoming romance with first boyfriend Nick, and her attempts to honor her Asian heritage while finding independence. Are the two mutually exclusive? These are the issues which all...

BIBLIOGRAPHY Sidman, Joyce. 2005. Song of the Water Boatman & Other Pond Poems. Ill. Beckie Prange. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 9780618135479. CRITICAL ANALYSIS In this poetry book about the life of a pond, Sidman composes eleven poems of varied poetic forms, including rhymed, free verse and haiku. The first poem, Listen for Me, kicks off the spring season by describing the emergence of spring peepers, commonly known as the tree frog. Fittingly, the final poem introduces the winter season through the burrowing of the painted turtle into the muddly bottom of the pond.  Each poem is paired with a nonfiction paragraph highlighting a specific aspect of pond life, like the pond’s food chain, or the life cycle of the microscopic water bear. There is also a Table of Contents, plus a glossary, to help guide the reader. This is also a Caldecott Honor book, which underscores the importance of Prange’s illustrations. They are woodcut watercolors and Pran...