Poetry Month Lemonade

I came across this delightful little book only this week but would love to share it with all my fellow poetry lovers during National Poetry Month.  Lemonade and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word was written by Bob Raczka.  However, Raczka credits Andrew Russ with being the first person he read who likes to make poems out of a single word, and he apparently loved the idea. So when life gives you word poems, make word lemonade!  Here's an example (minus the illustration):

vacation

ac tion

     i n 

a

va          n

When I first opened the book, it took me a while to get the hang of the poems, as the spacing threw me.  I didn't immediately realize that the sequencing of the letters of the words is drawn from the title. Aha! Then I discovered that the poem is rewritten on the back side of each page in case you don't  'get it.'

vacation

action

in

a 

van

Kind of a form of shape poetry, if you will.  But oh so clever!

friends

fr  e  d

f i   nds

  e d

chocolate

h      at

    co at

 h     o   t

c    oco a

And as you can see, the creativity is not limited to longer words, like 'constellation.' Even 'spring' and 'rain' are able to bloom into poems.  As a matter of fact, 'spring' described exactly how I felt after I read this little book of gems:

spring

i

s    ing

i

sp   in

i

            g

rin

If you were as tickled with these poems as I was, I bet right now you are running for paper and pencil to invent a few of your own.  In my mind, that's the highest compliment we can pay to Bob Raczka.

unBEElievables

Happy National Poetry Month!  What better way to celebrate the rhyming season than with this adorable bee book written and illustrated by Douglas Florian, always a favorite of mine.  Florian has regaled us with poetry collections over the years celebrating trees, dinosaurs, seasons, insects, dogs and fish, and now tackles the honeybee.  The poems themselves are as clever as ever...

The Beekeepers are "the boys in the hood"...
"We're keeping the bees. 
  We fret and we fuss. 
  We're keeping the bees. 
  Or do they keep us?"

Bee-coming teaches us...
"From egg I hatch in just three days,
  Bee-ginning my new larval phase. 
  I dwell in a six-sided cell. 
  My cozy home bee-fits me well..."

And my favorite Summer Hummer plays with words delightfully...
"I'm the hummer of summer,
  So busy with buzz. 
  A never-humdrummer 
  All covered with fuzz..."

Florian takes us from bee anatomy through drones, queens and workers, to swarms, hives, honey, and pollen.  He even includes a scary poem about the all too real phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder. At the end of the collection is a BEEbliography as well for further reading.  Perhaps the most notable detail about the book 'beesides' the outstanding rhyme is the inclusion on each page of a snippet of information that provides just a wee bit more for bee fans.  We learn that all worker bees are 'sisters', that queen bees are fed royal jelly and that there are 20,000 known species of bees but fewer than ten known species of honeybees.  Food for thought! I highly recommend this honey of a book.