Skip to main content

FOREST HAS A SONG


Vanderwater, Amy FOREST HAS A SONG. Ill. by Robbin Gourley. ISBN 9780618843497.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Amy Vanderwater brings us a hearty collection of 26 poems. They weave together the story of one girl’s experience in the forest over the course of a year. The poems begin with spring and then merge into summer, with poems like APRIL WAKING and PUFF. Fall and winter poems wrap up this collection, including MAPLES IN OCTOBER and COLORFUL ACTOR. Each poem brings the reader into the forest, so we enjoy the romp through each season with the girl. VanDerwater’s use of language leads the reader to experience the sounds and rhythms of the forest. By employing italics, she brings the forest’s perspective in some poems, which serves as a wonderful point-of-view experience for the young reader.

The collection is superbly  illustrated by Robbin Gourley. At its best, illustrations tell a visual story which parallels and enhances the textual message. Gourley does this brilliantly. Her illustrations are watercolor images, which lend to softening the edges of nature, allowing the main image to play center stage. For instance, the poem FIRST FLIGHT on page 17 is about an owl. Gourley’s painting of the owl is laser focused around the owls and soften through the birds wings. This captures the inherent sense of motion while drawing the reader into the owl’s eyes.
The poetic forms are varied. There are couplets, free verse and list poems. Some move quickly, as in this excerpt of  SONG on page 29:
Winds whip.
Geese call.
Squirrels chase.
Leaves fall.
Trees creak.
Birds flap.
Deer run.
Twigs snap.
Others invite readers to enjoy the softer moments, as in MOSS on page 19:

MOSS
Barefoot on this emerald carpet
toe-by-toe I squish across.
I softly sink in velvet green.
Oh how I wish for socks of moss.
SPOTLIGHT POEM AND LESSON
This lesson is designed for elementary or middle school. As a middle school librarian, my checkout lessons are short. I have five to ten minutes and then kids checkout. I have to pack a punch and fast!

For this lesson, read the WOODPECKER poem on page 25 one time. Be certain to model the staccato sound of the hole section. This playful use of language and space will draw the kids in.
After modeling the reading one time, show this brief clip of an actual woodpecker. The kids will enjoy watching the woodpecker bury a nut in a tree and then defend its turf from an errant squirrel!
Once the video is complete, ask the kids to recite the poem along with you. They will especially love to shout hole over and over again. Be sure to read this part in the staccato beat modeled through the physical layout of the poem.



Comments

  1. Amy LVApril 4, 2014 at 7:53 PM

    Thank you for this highlight of our book. It is an honor to be here! Best to you and your students in the library! a.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Irene KistlerApril 4, 2014 at 10:27 PM

      Amy,

      Wow, this is such an honor. Thank you for reading my review.

      I plan to do the woodpecker lesson for my next checkout cycle. I think the boys, in particular, will love it. I actually read it several times before I truly read the "hole" section correctly. Once I did, I could not stop chuckling. I kept rereading it. It is a brilliant layout!

      Thanks for writing such a superb collection of poems.

      Irene

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TRICKS

Hopkins, Ellen. 2009. TRICKS. New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division. ISBN 9781416950073.  TRICKS takes us on the journey of five teens descending into the seedy world of teen prostitution. Eden is the daughter of a preacher. Her mother sees demons in Eden’s first brush with love and sends her off to prevent whorish behavior, which Eden ironically learns at the ranch where she’s sent. Cody deals with the devastating loss of his stepfather to cancer by spiraling downward into the world of gambling. He soon will sell anything to pay his increasing debts. Seth is looking for love and acceptance of his homosexual identity, only to be accused by his father of being a deviant; then, he becomes one. Whitney desperately seeks love from her socialite mother and successful father. She wants to be seen and noticed by them, but will accept the love of a stranger to replace her familial invisibility. And finally Ginger, who is tricked for the fi...
3 comments
Read more

THE CROSSOVER

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...
1 comment
Read more