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Poetry Friday – Spring
Poetry Friday – Crickenburg Kids Write Nasty Poems
Once I tasted a Jolly Rancher andit smelled like poop? I ate it andafter I threw up in my dog’s foodand he ate it.
The worst thing I’ve ever smelledis the mud that my cousin fell inbut it wasn’t really mud.
Oh poop oh poophow you lay in the toilet settingin a puddle of brown you stinkso very badly thatyou put upon my face a veryhorrible frown
It was like a hot bowl of poop chili with a side of molded bread.It was like a drink of chocolate lemonade with gym sock dripping of sweat.It was like a burnt hot dog with horse relish and cole slaw.
I farted and threw upon zombie/ the zombie poopedhis pants twice.
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School visit = more nasty poems
“I went to the storeand I saw someone fartit was a big one.”
“The worst thing is smell.The worst thing is dirty !!Like you!”
“It smells real bad. It also smells like brussel sprouts dipped in salsa.”
If you smell somebodywho ate burriotos and beansrun for your life now!
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Poetry Friday – Dear Cook Poet returns!
TrainsSpockBlockTick TockBellTellNorth Pole ExpressSpock
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Poetry Friday – Kid Poetry Video – Qwikpick Instant Poetry Contest
In my book, The Qwikpick Adventure Society, the three kid heroes find a lot of odd ways to fight off boredom — origami contests, listening to 70s music, playing Penny Basketball, eating expired beef jerky and, yes, writing poetry about the smell of the sludge fountain at the sewage treatment plant.This last item, I’ve discovered, is a great hook for getting kids excited about my book and poetry, too.Some might turn up their noses at my methods, but I’ve gotten kids shouting, screaming and generally going nuts for poetry. As you can see in these two videos featuring clips from a library reading and a school visit: The Short Version. The Longer Version.
Keep reading for more details and some really gross kid poems….
Filed under: jacked up, kid poetry, kidlit, poetry friday, qwikpick | 6 Comments »
Poetry Friday – Sweet Daisy’s Nasty Poem
As promised, here are some highlights from a Qwikpick Instant Poetry Contest held at a rural library in SW Virginia.
Warning: Gross stuff lies ahead! I use my book to show kids how words and, especially poetry, can make expereinces vivid. I read the kids the haikus from my book that the characters wrote after seeing the Sludge Fountain in person.
Then I challenge them to write a poem in two minutes titled “The Worst Thing I Ever Smelled.”
Sweet Little Daisy stole the show, but I was also very happy that two of the librarians joined in this time. (And they got the syllable counts right!)
Here’s a grisly one from Daphne the Librarian:
“A dead deer on the
highway rotting in the sun
been there for some time.”
Not funny, but a fact of life in these parts where roadkill is common.
Remember this great kid?
Here’s his poem. (lightly edited) You’ll note he went slightly over the syllable count for a haiku, but his spelling more than makes up for that…
Poop and Sewer Sludge
by Maverick
When I smell poop poop / sewer sludge
it smells/ so bad that it makes / my heart budge!
I smell gases. A million / square!
It smells/ so bad that I got / to swear!
I run/ right out of that / porta pody.
Then/ I smell so / bad that it / kills everybody!
But the winner and grand champion was Daisy. She won for the title alone, really.
Here she is with her mother helping her write the poem…
And here is the poem…
Poots
I smelled this poot
And it was very yucky.
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Cece and Sam tag-team to entertain entire Elem. School
Wow, what a day!
Cece and I did our respective song and dances for grades k-5. Cece took the younger half, I took the older. We did three shows each. (Mine were about 45 minutes each.)
The Instant Poetry Contest was a huge hit.
Here’s a shot of some third grade poets in action…
By the end of the day I had a huge stack of about 100 gross kid poems. It was wild to see kids cheering and yelling about poetry! ( I hope I got a video that will show this.)
Since I have more that I’ll ever be able to use on Poetry Friday, I’ll go ahead and share one here:
“My Grandpa Joe”
My Grandpa Joe likes to show me his feet. A lot.
I think that they stink. A lot.
They smell like gross meatlof and dead rats,
also they have lot of, um, pimples.”
After I did the 5th grade show, the principal very nicely asked me not to use the word “poop” anymore. That’s tough when the book is all about kids searching for the legendary Fountain of Poop and the part I read out loud is the part about them finding the fountain and the smells that go with it. I did my best to follow the rules, but a few “poops” may have slipped out.
Cece held a couple of yodeling contests and taught tons of kids how to draw Sock Monkey and Froggie. I think the school (and the local bookstore) made a fortune selling stuffed sock monkeys. If only we could get a cut of that action!
A great day for both of us! It’s so weird how you can have a store booksigning that is so slow and then another time you can have a horde of kids clawing each other to get a bookmark.
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Potty Humorist on the road…
I drove a long way for a small crowd at a rural library today .. but boy was it worth it!
(Tom A. is my real name, by the way. Around here I use it for appearances to try to draw from my newspaper readership base. (Good luck with that.))
We had a blast! Or at least I did.
True, I didn’t sell a lot of books, but Cece pointed out that every family unit there took one home. (I’m referring to The Qwikpick Adventure Society, of course.)
The Instant Poetry Contest generated some crazy gross stuff, including smelly poems from two of the librarians! And a hilariously terse but nasty poem from a sweet little girl named Daisy. I’ll have to save all of that for poetry Friday, of course.
Also in the audience was a real live Sewage Professional! And, judging by his revolting poem and other writings, a fine wordsmith as well. And here’s a photo of his son. Don’t tell me this kid is not a TRUE Qwikpicker:
I like to pull out some books from the library shelves that I can encourage the kids to read:
(That’s Prince Jen, Dear Mr. Henshaw, Pinkwater’s 5 Novels, A Day No Pigs Would Die and the ubiquitous Hugo Cabret. Next time, I’m going to add Millicent Min since the above pictured kid asked me why all the books were about boys.)
Sometimes I feel like I’m getting to the point where these sorts of wonderful experiences are outweighing the heartaches.
With more shows on Thursday for all the 3-5 graders at a Roanoke school and then a B&N signing on Saturday, followed by another signing at Blacksburg’s wonderful Easy Chair Bookstore this is really a great time for me. Yeeha!
Filed under: kid poetry, kidlit, qwikpick | 3 Comments »
review: Dear Mr. Henshaw
Last night I read Dear Mr. Henshaw in one sitting.
You may know that I’ve long been a big Cleary fan. I think Ramona is just so kungfu perfect.
But Mr. Henshaw is a very different sort of a book and I loved it, too. Man, I never realized that Cleary was dropping this sort of stuff back in 1983. You could put it alongside the freshest modern kid-lit and it would still shine.
At first I was all “can she really tell a good story through these letters to a famous artist?”
Then in one of the early letters, you sense that the kid’s father isn’t around and you know there’s a story here. And it’s an amazing story. Tangled and grown up and nuanced, yet all poured out in a boy’s stream of con writing. A story that becomes extremely real through just the tiniest details: The kid needs a dad to show him how to rig up a lunchbox alarm, for instance.
But the big question with this sort of a novel is — will it all add up to something? Yes, it does! And it’s well worth it.
I do regret that the finale of the book was illustrated, though. That was a moment that the reader needed to experience in his own mind, without a picture.
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Cece Bell’s menu drawings
Thought you might get a kick out of Cece’s drawing on the back of a Country Cooking menu. The items in the picture were requested by the same kid that wrote that “Dear Cook“poem I used for Poetry Friday a while back.
On the front of the menu, there’s a truck hauling a star…
Cece has done some great menu art in the past. I need to raid her mother’s refrigerator door and scan more some in…
Furthermore, if you’re ever driving through Virginia, Country Cookin’ is a small chain of nice kid-friendly restaurants with a salad bar. Salad bars are scarce in these parts, folks.
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