Awful Ogre, Summer's Over

Awful Ogre and I are forced to admit that summer's over.  You can read all about Awful Ogre's summer in Awful Ogre Running Wild by Jack Prelutsky, with gloriously grotesque watercolor and pen and ink illustrations by Paul O. Zelinsky (Greenwillow, 2008).  Actually, Awful Ogre and our family did a lot of the same things:  painted pictures, went on picnics, attended concerts, visited grandparents.  There may have been a little running wild in there, too.

"Awful Ogre Reflects on the Summer"

Oh, it's been an awful summer,
A delightful awful summer,
Just the sort of awful summer
Awful Ogre does adore.
But at last, alas, it's ending,
Yes my awful summer's ending,
My delightful awful summer
Now is practically no more.
[continued]

Prelutsky and Zelinsky's Awful Ogre's Awful Day (Greenwillow, 2005) is just as awful as his summer was.  Which is to say, we loved it.

[Poetry Friday is at Wild Rose Reader today.  Thanks, Elaine!]

Poems in Your Pocketses

Tomorrow is the second national Poem in Your Pocket Day.  This year I'm choosing a riddle poem, thereby increasing the likelihood that it will actually be read aloud.  Most people are probably familiar with Bilbo and Golem's exchange of riddles in The Hobbit; Tolkien modeled these on the riddle poems in the tenth-century Anglo-Saxon Red Book of Exeter.  This one is my favorite of Tolkien's (also the easiest to solve):

A box without hinges, key, or lid
Yet golden treasure inside is hid.

You can answer it in the comments.  And tell me, what you have got in your pocketses?

Poetry Friday: On the Farm

From David Elliot's website, a poem written for On the Farm (illustrated by Holly Meade; Candlewick, 2008) that didn't make it into print:

The Robin
sings from her branch
but wants to roar--
small cousin of Tyrannosaur.

Of the 13 poems that did make the cut, The Bull and The Bees (also quoted in the Horn Book review) are my favorites, but all of them are witty and well-observed.  I also like the old-fashioned farmyard feel of Holly Meade's woodcut-and-watercolor illustrations, their spaciousness and scale.  Everything works together in this book--the poems, the illustrations, the design (large format, large font); it seems perfect for a preschool storytime.  We liked it at home, too.  A Cybils finalist in the Poetry category.

[For local folks:  Kidwell Farm at Frying Pan Farm Park in Herndon, VA is a 1930s-era working dairy farm.  Their spring birthing schedule is already up!]

Poetry Friday: Nevermore!

In honor of the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth (this Monday, January 19); the opening lines of "The Raven:"

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door--
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
Only this and nothing more."

[Read the rest--you know you want to--at poets.org)

I can't read Poe's "Raven" without being reminded of Mortimer.  He's Arabel's Raven (Joan Aiken; illustrated by Quentin Blake).  Another childhood favorite with several sequels I never knew existed before writing this post.  Nevermore!