Grab Your Edition Forest Has A Song: Poems Penned By Amy Ludwig VanDerwater Presented As Copy
forest is magical and aweinspiring, and this collection of poems has a beautiful way of showcasing that, The rich poetry coupled with the lively watercolor artwork brings so much wonder to each page, The author does a fantastic job of showing us how magnificent the forest is by focusing on one little aspect at a time as the seasons change.
The loose structure and freedom of the piece added to the lighthearted tone of the book in a lovely way.
I really enjoyed this little collection of poems and the fantastic illustrations, and I can't wait to have it on a shelf in my classroom! The forest has a song and a name: "Forest" with all the animals and seasons that one can enjoy.
Sometimes the exploring girl narrates, sometimes the tree, the squirrel is talking, and the text is in italics,
Soft watercolor images portray the seasons and objects described, I do wish the poison ivy image was a bit more accurate!
Some of the poems in here would be nice additions to Storytimes.
A collection of poems about features of a forest, There are soooooo many titles to love but my favorites are "Forest News" which is about looking at animal tracks to see what's been happening in the forest, "April Waking" which uses deliciously fun language to describe the onset of Spring, and "Fossil" which describes an imaginative experience across centuries.
Watercolor paintings illustrate every page, Overall, a fresh offering of poetry that highlights nature's beauty, A perfect antidote to NDD nature deficit disorder or poetry avoidance, This gorgeous collection of poems quietly invite young readers to get outside, to observe, to listen and smell, An evocative mix of bitesized and longer poems depict one young girl's infatuation with nearby woods from winter through, spring, summer, fall, and back to winter The accompanying illustrations are watery and lovely.
Forest Has a Song is a solid addition to this children's librarian's "go to" collection, Short, richly worded poems celebrate the minor and the majestic: dead branches, fossils, maple trees in full color, squirrels, and owls.
The poet's rich word choice is lovely as well: Hoping, Hopping. High above. Crooning. Plopping. Finding love I look for lichens, tracing flakes stretching stems, . . sweetly sing greenest greetings sent to Spring, Aaaah. I use Forest Has a Song in an outdoor story time conducted in a forest once each season.
The poem Invitation is the perfect start with reference to a spicy breeze and rows of friendly trees and the concluding stanza: I'm here.
Come visit. Please. The program concludes with the poem Farewell, which offers the exhortation to Remember, I am Forest. I am here. Lovely watercolor illustrations are an added bonus, A perfect selection for sharing with children who already love the outdoors or who are just being introduced to the loveliness of the forest or poetry.
Richie's Picks: FOREST HAS A SONG by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater and Robbin Gourley, ill, Clarion, March,p. , ISBN:
"Forest News
I stop to read
the Forest News
in mud or fallen snow,
Articles are printed
by critters on the go.
Foxes pass.
Deer run through.
Turkeys scratch
for hidden food,
Young raccoons
drink sips of creek,
Mouse and hawk
play hide and seek,
Here a possum
whiskerywild
climbs a tree trunk
with her child,
And in this place
while people sleep
a rabbit hops,
A housecat creeps.
Scribbled hints
in footprints
tell about the day,
I stop to read
the Forest News
before it's worn away, "
Early in the morning, here on a Saturday in Sebastopol, it is foggy and chilly and relatively quiet.
Just a crow complaining in the distance about something or other,
It is pretty conducive to my transporting myself back to one of those early Saturday mornings, many decades ago, when I shivered a bit as we walked through a damp woods on the east coast the pungent smell of rotting leaves and fungi thick in the air the remaining snow lying in patches in the shelter of trees a few squirrels observing our wanderings along a trail.
That is where this book takes me,
There are times that I take great joy in having, so far, gotten to experience everything from an early childhood of ancient black and white television to this bold new era when I teach library students in several countries without leaving my home.
But then, on the other hand, I've recently been exposed to an overload of little children playing video games that are designed for teaching soldiers how to kill.
And cavernous marketplaces filled with plastic everythings, And now, fortysomething years after Joni Mitchell sat in a Manhattan hotel room and wrote about our having to get back to the Garden of Eden not the nearby Madison Square one, I am thinking and fussing about how we, as librarians, can help create a little bit of balance, a little bit of peace and sanity in our little corners of the planet, by exposing our young patrons and their parents to books like FOREST HAS A SONG, an exceptionally beautiful book of poetry filled with whimsical verse and images about the outdoors that are soothing my soul on this relatively quiet morning.
I'm a big fan of Robbin Gourley's watercolor illustrations, and I really like how she has visualizes this collection of VanDerwater's poems about traipsing through the woods.
A girl and her dog are clearly at home in this forest where they encounter pinecones, and chickadees and trilobites fiddleheads, and lichen and Lady's Slippers.
I really like Gourley's provision of white space, permitting my eyes a place to rest amidst the shadows of trees as I quietly reflect on the poems and images.
"Bone Pile
I wonder
were you someone's meal
I wonder
were you old
I wonder
did you freeze to death
last winter
in the cold
I wonder
how you'd tell the tale.
I wonder
if you could,
I wonder
who will bury you
I wonder
if I should, "
FOREST HAS A SONG ends with a Farewell poem, in which the Forest whispers to the girl that she should remember her.
This is a fitting conclusion for this very beautiful and memorable collection of poems,
Richie Partington, MLIS
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The watercolors are wonderful, Plus the poems bring the artwork to life as well as being delightful in themselves, A spider is a “nevertangling dangling spinner / knitting angles, trapping dinner, ” A tree frog proposes, “Marry me, Please marry me / Pick me now, / Make me your choice. / Im one great frog / with one strong voice, ” VanDerwater lets the denizens of the forest speak for themselves in twentysix lighthearted, easytoread poems, As she observes, “Silence in Forest / never lasts long, / Melody / is everywhere / mixing in / with piney air, / Forest has a song. ” The graceful, appealing watercolor illustrations perfectly suit these charming poems that invite young readers into the woodland world at every season.
"I'm here. /Come visit. /Please"
I get excited when someone out there who gives so much to the poetry community by way of celebrating the works of others releases a first work of their very own.
Wellknown already in the social media circles with her presence in online discussions and forums and via her own blog, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is someone to befriend and follow now.
. .
because, in time, she is going to be huge, If FOREST HAS A SONG is any indication of what we might be able to draw from Amy by way of verse, she is wellpoised to join the ranks of cherished children's poets such as Myra Cohn Livingston, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Betsy Franco, Joyce Sidman, Laura Purdie Salas, and Marilyn Singer.
In fact, it brings me a certain amount of delight to slip Amy's new book onto the shelf with the others mentioned here.
If "Forest" does, indeed have a song, it is gentle lullaby composed for the many voices that would come from within the foliage.
And Amy captures many of them within the collection, Beginning with "Invitation," Amy welcomes readers into the focus of the book by employing the senses and what a beautiful way to welcome new readers of poetry into the genre as well as into the book.
In the following poems, italicized font represents the voice of the forest responding with its gentle voice to the presence of a small girl who has come into the forest.
Like a child might do, this little girl picks up a wet stick and begins to break it apart:
Spongy springy stick
I pick it into tiny bits.
Sliver sail the wind,
I don't want to disrupt the natural feel of this wonderful book by mentioning the new standards coming out for teachers and students, but looking at this sample piece of Amy's verse, we can see into the simplicity of the genre while taking a closer look at how we might introduce alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme.
And while Amy may not follow the rigidity of haiku see what I did there, here is a mentor text in how the style may provide the frame for creative writing.
Amy likens the tracks of the forest creatures as a text we might be able to "read" upon entering the forest in her piece, "Forest News.
" The poem ends:
Scribbled hints
in footprints
tell about the day,
I stop to read
the Forest News
before it's worn away,
Amy, via her sojourner, moves deeper into the forest to find: fiddleheads who sing "greenest greetings",fossils "forever dead calm", lichens "messages in cursive code"and lady's slipper with masterful allusions to the familiar character of Cinderella.
With these entities, I see an opportunity to employ Amy's book within a unit on field flowers or the ecology of a forest.
As Amy's collection moves through the seasons, the reader experiences some of the changesand some of the visitors who come and gothat occur over the course of the year.
That the book moves through these seasons would make FOREST HAS A SONG a wonderful ladder to the D, B. Johnson series of Henry books that would introduce younger readers to the classic work, WALDEN,
Robbin Gourley's water color illustrations and the colorful, leafy end papers round out a beautiful, beautiful little book that should be in classroom libraries every where.
Just in time for National Poetry Month, this is one you would love to have on a desk during a poetry flood for that reader looking for gentle verse with a nature theme.
There is so much to celebrate within this collection, I wanted to come out early in support as well as praise of this collection, Reading through it a tenth time, I am reminded that Amy's gentle spirit throughout this book is best found in her not telegraphing her unique play on words or her ability to render thoughtful verse, but it is found within Amy's continual and consistent pointing back to the forest she has invited us to consider and she has invited us to come in to take a look.
This book of poems would appeal to any nature lover, It is very descriptive in language and transports the reader to the tranquility of the forest, It makes you appreciate the simplicity of the outdoors and reminds us to take time to turn off the t.
v. and video games, leave the cell phone behind and enjoy exploring the forest, The watercolor pictures are beautiful and capture the emotions and scenes perfectly, My son's favorite poem in the collection is Bone Pile, in which the author ponders what happened to the creature and if he/she should bury the bones at the end.
The poems have great rhythm and rhyme as well as alliteration and onomatopoeia, which are elements we practice and study in my first grade classroom.
I can't wait to share this great collection with my first graders! This is a beautiful, watercolorfilled book of poetry for children, celebrating the voices of the forest, some melancholy like the frog looking for a mate, and some joyful like the owlet on his first flight.
Wintergreen: "One bite of winter / lingers in a summer leaf, / Snowflakes fill my mouth"
I heard the poet read at the recent TLA conference and her reading of First Flight and others from this, her first book, really moved me.
It's a lovely ode to the forest through all the seasons! Happy last day of National Poetry Month! I love this book of poetry, it is perfect for young readers.
So often, poetry that is appropriate for young readers is funny and silly, That has it's place, especially for a great introduction to poetry a hook, But so often, young children have trouble understanding poems, what they are trying to say, the message the author is trying to convey.
This book has poems that speak to young children, All of the poems are about creatures and items in the forest, The forest theme helps unite the poems, The book is divided into seasons, which is perfect for science seeing living things change, Great book for a primary classroom or one to use to introduce your child to poetry,
A lovely picture book of wellcrafted poetry exploring the seasons in a forest, The poems vary in length, style, and perspective, yet each poem is engaging and playful in tone, I especially enjoyed Forest News, an example of the humor and imagery that is found throughout this collection, A wonderful book to read aloud or enjoy quietly poem by poem, Forest Has a Song by Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, illustrated by Robbin Gourley
Clarion Books,
Poetry
Pages
Recommended for grades
If you've ever spent a day in or near a forest you will feel the authenticity of the poems in this collection.
With the opening poem "Invitation" we are beckoned into the forest, Once inside the forest we experience the change of seasons, the wildlife within the forest walls, and the simple things one finds to do within.
The soft watercolor illustrations perfectly compliment the feel of the
poems,
I'll be adding this to my poetry collection!
This poetry collection has everything you can imagine from a forest in it and every single poem is a winner.
I expect it to win a lot of awards this year, Beautiful! Forest Has A Song is a beautiful collection of poems about the forest, I love the different points of view in the poems, Some poems start in the point of view of a person, then it switches to the point of view of the animal it is about.
Some poems are entirely from the perspective of the animal, and some are entirely from the perspective of the person.
The poems are not just about animals, but they are also about plants, dead branches, leaves, and snow, The poems really create a great image of nature, The poems are honest and informed about nature, instead of talking down to the children, The poems really maintain a positive spirit,
I could see students using this book as a mentor text, The students could use these poems as models and then write their own poems about nature, They could pick a certain season to write about and think about how the plants, animals, and weather are during that season.
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