the poem that will not end blog tour: 3 course special (review + recipe + giveaway)!

January 31, 2014September 6, 2017 ~ jama ~ 56 Comments

It started with a rhythm,
a rhythm and a rhyme.
It wouldn’t let me stop,
it ate up all my time.

Holy poetic peas and potatoes!

Though we’re very happy to be celebrating the official release this week of THE POEM THAT WILL NOT END: Fun with Poetic Forms and Voices by Joan Bransfield Graham and Kyrsten Brooker (Two Lions, 2014), there is one teensy problem.

We can’t stop reading it!

Innocently opened this book about a rhyming maniac called Ryan O’Brian who cannot cannot cannot stop writing poetry. All day long and even into the night, he’s scribbling and doodling and tapping and clapping, making poems everywhere with everything — on the sidewalk with chalk, on the soccer field with mud, in the bathroom with toothpaste, with marker on his toes! Yes, yes, very impressive to be sure, but what we really love is what he does at the kitchen table —

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friday feast: yes! we are latinos by alma flor ada, f. isabel campoy and david diaz

November 8, 2013September 14, 2017 ~ jama ~ 38 Comments

Which of the following statements is true?

Hispanics/Latinos are a single race who all look alike
All Latinos in the United States are recent immigrants, most of whom are here illegally
All Latinos speak Spanish and sound alike
Hispanic immigrants aren’t interested in learning English
Latinos are the largest and fastest growing minority group in the country and have lived in the territories now known as the United States for over four centuries.

If you guessed the last one, you’re correct, but did any of the other statements sound familiar? Chances are good you’ve encountered people who actually believe they’re true.

That’s one of the reasons Yes! We Are Latinos by eminent authors and scholars Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy (Charlesbridge, 2013), is a must read not only for young people but for everyone.

This wonderful celebration of the rich diversity and mixed cultural origins of the more than 50 million Latinos in the U.S. informs, enlightens, and helps to dispel many commonly-held misconceptions about who Latinos are and the nature of their vital, historic role in the fabric of our society.

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friday feast: trick-or-treat by debbie leppanen and tad carpenter

September 6, 2013September 20, 2017 ~ jama ~ 14 Comments

Boooooooo-yah!

So nice of you to wear your monster mask for today’s post. Like me, you’re probably already feeling that Fall chill in the air, especially at night. The leaves will start turning in the blink of your good eye, the winds will howl, and come October, you’ll have an actual excuse to wear your green scaly costume in public. 🙂

While you’re gnawing on that leg bone in anticipation, thought I’d share three poems from Trick-or-Treat: A Happy Haunter’s Halloween by Debbie Leppanen and Tad Carpenter (Beach Lane, 2013).

This mixed bag of 15 rhymes is perfect for munchkins and short grown-ups who like their scariness served up with a good side of humor. A group of trick-or-treaters and iconic Halloween regulars (skeletons, mummies, ghouls, witches, black cats, monsters) are all out on the prowl for a spooktacularly good time. We follow them to a dark alley, a graveyard, a Halloween party, and into the homes of mummies and vampires. One of my favorite poems, “Mummy Dearest,” mentions eerie edibles:

She fixes my breakfast: worms on toast.
I like the juicy ones the most.

She tears my clothes all to shreds.
(On the bus, it sure turns heads.)

She packs me spider eggs for lunch.
Mmm . . . the way they snap and crunch!

*picks spider legs from teeth*

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friday feast: a miracle of flour, yeast, and metaphor

August 30, 2013September 28, 2013 ~ jama ~ 38 Comments

“Peace goes into the making of a poem, as flour goes into the making of bread.” ~ Pablo Neruda

oilbread — Franck Dangereux’s Oil Bread via The Food Fox (click for recipe)

The other day, after rereading Lesléa Newman’s, “According to Bread,” one of my favorite poems in The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School (Pomelo Books, 2013), chewy, mouthwatering bread names playfully called to me, each a poem unto itself.

Bagel, Brioche, Baguette . . . Ciabatta, Challah, Chapati . . . Kulcha, Lavash, Focaccia, Tortilla, Pita, Zwieback.

Play with us, they said. Roll, pat, toss us! Slice, butter, dip, fill, break us. We know we smell good. 🙂

Bread is a beautiful thing — venerable, inclusive, eternal, irresistible. Staff of life and a sacrament, it pays our way and is a gift from every culture and ethnicity in the world.

rosemaryfoccacia — Rosemary Focaccia via My Year Cooking with Chris Kimball (click for recipe)

Just naming these breads makes me happy. I daresay I feel a tad cosmopolitan because I’ve actually tasted all of them and more. What do you reach for when the bread basket is passed around?

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friday feast: are your tomatoes laughing?

June 14, 2013September 14, 2017 ~ jama ~ 35 Comments

Seriously, who could resist a poetry book called Laughing Tomatoes?

Well, I certainly couldn’t, but I shamefully admit I didn’t actually know about this fabuloso feast of pure delight until just a few months ago.

This Pura Belpré Honor Award-winning bilingual 20-poem collection by Chicano poet Francisco X. Alarcón and Maya Christina Gonzalez was first published by Children’s Book Press back in 1997. Where was I?!

Likely staring at grumpy, aloof tomatoes and not appreciating strawberries for the “sweet tender hearts” they are, living a bland life full of ho-hum edibles, certainly not hearing the warm morning sun calling to me through my window, and — *shakes head* — totally oblivious to dew, “the fresh taste of the night.”

But now, having read this glorious, jubilant celebration of Spring and its earthly delights, family, culture and community, my life is complete!