Apirl is... National Poetry Month!

Spring as sprung and the celebrating poetry as begun! April is National Poetry Month! Thanks to a wonderful professor in my MLS studies, I am now an advocate in promoting poetry for children and teens. April has already started, but it isn't too late to join the fun of poetry!

I will be posting new poetry breaks as well as some poetry book reviews during the whole month.

As a Children's Librarian I've already started my celebration by incorporating a poem or two into each of the preschool storytime. It is my hope that I'll find some good poems to use for my toddlers. I know they're out there, but I must admit the the first theme of "frogs" was a little hard. But, preschoolers, I used Douglas Florian's Lizards, Frogs and Polliwogs: Poems and Paintings for two poems. I've also created a display to promote all the great poetry books the library has but is rarely visited (so sad!).

If you want to get great poems every single day of April, please visit the professional blog Poetry For Children created and maintained by Dr. Sylvia Vardell. She is doing Poetry Tag, which is a game where she will post a poem from a different poet each day. Dr. Vardell further explains on her first post, Poetry Tag: J. Patrick Lewis is IT:

One poet offers a poem and "tags" a fellow poet. Each poet then shares a poem that is connected to the previous poem in some way--by theme, word, idea, or tone--and provides a sentence or two explaining that connection. These may be new original unpublished poems or poems drawn from previous works.

By the end of the month, we’ll have a “chain” of poems and see firsthand how poetry can be selected, connected, shared and celebrated (Vardell 2010).

This idea is absolutely awesome! Please visit her blog....

But keep come on visiting The Wielded Pen - Children's Corner for more poetry celebration!!!!