Here’s a little something to get you in the mood for Shakespeare’s birthday tomorrow: a skit based on Midsummer Night’s Dream. How cute is Ringo’s roar?!
poetry and cake month
poet of the day: gooney bird greene
GOONEY BIRD IS SO ABSURD by Lois Lowry,
illustrated by Middy Thomas (HMH, 2009),
Chapter book for ages 6-10, 112 pp.
Gooney Bird? For National Poetry Month?
You can bet your underpants on it!
Is it true that if you warm your brain to the right temperature, you can write better poetry?
In Gooney Bird is So Absurd, the fourth book in Lois Lowry’s fabulous chapter book series, the lovable, irrepressible second grader who’s been captivating everyone with her brains and quirky fashion sense, proves this theory to be correct.
For the month of January, Mrs. Pidgeon is teaching her class at Watertower Elementary all about poetry. Gooney Bird gets right into the action by donning her special two-ponytail-brain-warming hat. She warns her curious, giggling classmates against calling it “underpants” to get a cheap laugh, and very wisely declares that like a poem, her green, frilly hat (perhaps underpants in another life) can be “whatever you want it to be.”
With each new chapter, the class learns about a different poetic form. They begin with couplets, then move on to haiku, limericks, list poems, and poems for many voices. They even learn about the importance of constructive criticism and revision. Thanks to Mrs. Pidgeon, the humorous and endearing antics of all the kids, and Gooney Bird’s ability to take charge, inspire, and spark excitement no matter what she says or does, none of it feels like “lessons.” Making poems is sheer joy, and Gooney Bird and her classmates discover, among other things, that a poem doesn’t have to rhyme, and “only has to be long enough to say what you want it to say.”
Early on, Mrs. Pidgeon tells the class that she likes to begin each morning by reading a poem, and reveals that her mother, Mrs. X, is in a nursing home and not doing too well. While going through an old trunk, Mrs. Pidgeon finds some of her mother’s poems, which she reads to her on her visits. She also shares several of these with the class, the most poignant being this list poem:
IT MAKES ME HAPPY TO REMEMBER:
A cake with pink candles,
A yellow hair ribbon,
A kitten named jingle,
The lace collar on my mother’s best dress,
Ruffled curtains in my bedroom,
The fragrance of honeysuckle,
And fireflies on summer evenings,
So many fireflies.
I wonder where the fireflies have gone.
Maybe you can guess what happens next. Bad news, but Gooney Bird steps up to the plate once again, by organizing the best, most important Poem for Many Voices the class has ever done. It’s beautiful how this final poem ties up all the plot points and incorporates everything the kids have learned about poetry throughout the month. Poetry is, above all, about feelings, and Gooney Bird and her classmates are full of heart and inherent wisdom.
If you’re not yet familiar with the Gooney Bird series, run to the library this minute and share them with your kids. They will instantly become fascinated with the red-headed girl who showed up on her first day of school wearing pajamas and cowboy boots, and they will love Mrs. Pidgeon, who says things like, “Poetry is not to be judged. You just savor it.”
About the books, Lowry says:
Gooney Bird Greene is the child I wish I could have been, because I was a terribly shy, self-conscious child (and) I envied desperately those children who were outgoing and self-confident . . . Each book focuses on a different teaching device. In the first book, Gooney teaches the class how to tell stories, and the second one deals with words. I have in mind several other things that this unusual and very outgoing, self-confident child can give to the whole class and her teacher. These books are fun to do.
The third book, Gooney the Fabulous, is about fables, and now, Gooney Bird is So Absurd, which was released just last month, features poetry. All the characters are spot-on believable; if you love Lois Lowry already, you will love her even more (I know, how is that possible)?
Okay, put on your brain warmer hats and get to work!
Click here to read an excerpt from Gooney Bird is So Absurd, and here for more information about the entire series.
*Snowball, pictured here with a dark chocolate raspberry egg on his nose, and teddy bear underpants on his head, would like everyone to read a Gooney Bird book to celebrate spring!
a little cupcake adventure at Georgetown cupcake
Saturday morning, Len and I headed out to Georgetown Cupcake for a little taste test. You may remember my mentioning this shop last week. It’s owned by two sisters, Sophie and Katherine, who’ve now become quite famous all over the country for their award-winning chocolate ganache cupcakes. Research is hard work, but somebody’s gotta do it.
friday feast: black cake from the woman in white
“Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.” ~ Emily Dickinson
Only authenticated daggeureotype, circa 1846-47,
taken at Mt. Holyhoke Seminary.
Most of the time, when I think of Emily Dickinson, I imagine her in a white dress, sitting at the little writing table in her upstairs bedroom at the Homestead in Amherst, pouring her heart out in a letter, or fearlessly penning another one of her flaming, pithy gems.
Dickinson Homestead, Amherst, MA (Emily’s bedroom = 2 windows, upper left). photo by Water Rat
Somehow it never occurred to me before that she probably also wrote a fair amount of poems in the kitchen or pantry, scribbling stray thoughts down on scraps of paper or in the margins of newspapers. Surely while she was gathering, adding, or mixing ingredients, inhaling aromas fruity, pungent, spicy, or sweet –she was also mentally combining fleeting images and impressions according to her prevailing mood. Writers, after all, are usually bound by 24-hour recipes.
Handwritten manuscript of “Wild Nights.”
While Emily celebrated the domestic realm as Amherst’s most well-known recluse and eccentric, she did not hesitate to defy certain traditional expectations to meet her own ends, especially with regard to writing. In The Cambridge Introduction to Emily Dickinson (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Wendy Martin states, “Unable to have an office or workplace of her own, Dickinson created one out of the kitchen hearth, the verdant garden, and the small writing table in her upstairs bedroom.”
crazy for cupcakes
“Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.” ~ Buttercup Bake Shop
If you think you’ve been seeing cupcakes everywhere, you’re definitely not imagining things. Ever since Carrie and Miranda ate those famous Magnolia Bakery cupcakes on “Sex and the City” back in 2000, everyone has gone cupcake crazy.
photo by yummyinthetummyblog.
Actually, Magnolia Bakery cupcakes had been oh-so-cool as far back as 1996, when co-owners Jennifer Appel and Allysa Torey began to specialize in cupcakes after they made a batch from leftover cake batter and noticed how quickly they were snatched up. “Sex and the City” then turned the Greenwich Village bakery into a tourist shrine, and cupcake specialty shops have been sprouting up across the country ever since.
Magnolia Bakery delectables (yummyinthetummy).
Today’s gourmet cupcake is a far crumb from the ones we ate in childhood. They’ve gone deliciously upscale, made of the finest, freshest ingredients, like Valrhona chocolate, Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla, and European sweet cream. Flavors like lava fudge, ginger lemon, passion fruit poppy seed, and chai latte beg for your attention alongside the traditional vanilla and chocolate. Some are filled with luscious, flavored creams, others adorned with coconut or colorful sprinkles. What do you say to a chocolate liquer cupcake filled with raspberry Chambord cream, topped with white chocolate meringue frosting?
Jama's Alphabet Soup 