The incredible thing about comics, to me, is the medium’s diversity. Some people hear the word “comics” and are reminded of newsprint pages filled with superheroes. Others see shelves of manga stacked tight, while some readers are more familiar with hardbound graphic novels and nonfiction volumes. All of these formats and types of books rightly describe comics.
Listen to this dramatic audio performance of “Grasshoppers” from Paul Fleischman’s book, Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices (HarperCollins, 1988). Have students perform poems from this book aloud, or challenge them to adapt favorite poems for a performance in two…
Enjoy this dramatic audio performance of an excerpt from Sharon Creech’s Heartbeat (HarperCollins, 2004) and consider sharing this multimedia resource with your students or library patrons. Creech’s poetic novel in free verse exemplifies the concept of rhythm, and what better…
Novels written in verse can make for great summer reading! Savor a verse here and there amidst the flurry of summer activities and before you know it, you've finished a novel and enjoyed a book of poetry.
In late April I attended the Jane Addams Book Award announcement at Chicago's Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, the actual location where the crusader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient supported immigrants and advocated for social justice and racial and gender equality.
The question I'm most often asked by kids is, "Where do your ideas come from?" I always give a concrete answer, like "Someone suggested that to me" or "It happened in my childhood." And while those answers are true for some of what I write, many of my ideas come from somewhere else. But it's hard to put my finger on just where that somewhere else is.