13 Years Ago Today; Plus, Info on April Pulley Sayre's Celebration of Life

In addition to Earth Day and Poetry Friday, today happens to also be our TeachingAuthors' Blogiversary! So this is a special, unscheduled post to commemorate all three aspects of the day, and it contains a mix of joy and sadness. At the end of the post, I share an excerpt from a beautiful Earth Day book written and illustrated by April Pulley Sayre, and I provide information on how to live stream the celebration of April's life taking place tomorrow, April 23.

Hard to believe that we started this blog THIRTEEN years ago today! Four of us still blogging together here were part of that original team: April, Esther, Mary Ann and me. We've been blessed to connect with many wonderful fellow TeachingAuthors on this journey. I was especially touched a year ago when a number of current and former TeachingAuthors gathered in a surprise virtual meeting in honor of our 12th anniversary. Esther wrote about that fun event in this post.   

The TAs also surprised me that day with a basket of lovely flowers. I shared the following photo of it in my blog post from a year ago today:

I love houseplants but don't have much room for them, so I gave away several of those in the basket. I kept two, though. One, the peace lily, is hardly noticeable in the above photo--it's tucked at the back of the basket. But it grew quickly and I transplanted it to a larger pot. The lily recently bloomed for the second time, and the violet--one of my favorites--blooms regularly:

Like our TeachingAuthors team, these plants are gifts that keep on giving! I am so grateful to be part of this team.

And today, on Earth Day, I can't help thinking about my dear friend, April Pulley Sayre, and how grateful I am to have known her for over twenty years. Last November, I wrote of how devastating it was to lose her at such a young age. As I said in that post, her work lives on. 

Many of April's books celebrate nature and the gifts of our planet. Today, I want to share an excerpt from the end of her beautiful picture book Thank You, Earth: A Love Letter to Our Planet (Greenwillow Books), which came out last year:   

These words are especially poignant now that April's gone. 

If you like, you can watch a video of the book's amazing photo illustrations and listen as April reads the book herself here. 

Tomorrow, April 23, there will be a celebration of April's life held in South Bend, Indiana. Unfortunately, I'm unable to attend in person, but I plan to participate in the live stream. Here's the info April's husband, Jeff Sayre, posted on Facebook: 

     "With difficulty and great expense, I have managed to hire and coordinate with an event production crew to shoot and live stream the event. If you cannot attend in person, here is the link to use on Saturday morning. The stream will go live this Saturday, April 23, 2022 at 8:30 a.m. EDT (we are on east coast time). The event officially starts at 9:00 a.m. It will last two hours with a 20-minute intermission.
     This is not a Zoom broadcast. This is not a Facebook Live broadcast. It is better. However, it is not without the inherent vagaries of intermittent connectivity issues. So there is no guarantee that the event stream will be perfect and go without a hitch. For that reason, the event is also being recorded to be shared at a later date. This is the actual link. Yes, it uses a TinyURL.
      April Pulley Sayre Celebration live stream: https://tinyurl.com/aprilpulleysayre ."

I know many in the kidlit community will be attending the event, and my thoughts will be with them, and especially with April's husband, Jeff.

Don't forget to check out this week's Poetry Friday round up hosted by Margaret at Reflections on the Teche.  

Carmela

Our 9th Blogiversary: Spring Cleaning and New Beginnings

Believe it or not, this Sunday, April 22, we will celebrate our

Ninth Blogiversary!

After reflecting on this milestone, I'll share a lovely spring poem from former TeachingAuthor JoAnn Early Macken.

In some ways, it feels like it was only last week that Esther Hershenhorn and I met to brainstorm ideas for a group blog. But, strangely enough, it also feels like we've been blogging here forever, especially when I think about how the children's publishing industry has changed in the last nine years.

For those of you who are relatively new to our blog, I'm pleased to report that four of the current six TeachingAuthors have been here since we founded this site back in 2009: April Halprin Wayland, Esther Hershenhorn, Mary Ann Rodman, and me (Carmela Martino). You can see the four of us, plus former TeachingAuthor JoAnn Early Macken, in the photo below, taken when we presented together at a conference some years ago.

From left to right: Mary Ann Rodman, Esther Hershenhorn, JoAnn Early Macken, Carmela Martino, and April Halprin Wayland.

While I miss JoAnn and the other TeachingAuthors who have left the team, I'm thrilled to have Bobbi Miller and Carla Killough McClafferty with us now to add their unique perspectives to our topics. If you'd like to read more about our current and past TeachingAuthors, check out the About Us page.  Also, I encourage those of you who teach or have aspiring young writers at home to visit our recently updated Young Writers page, which includes links to tips specifically for young writers and sites where they can get their work published. If you have any sites we should add to the list, please let us know in the comments.

Just as our TeachingAuthors team has changed over the years, so has our posting schedule. We originally blogged three days a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. A few years ago, we cut back to Mondays and Fridays only, with an occasional Wednesday Writing Workout. As we begin our tenth year, we've decided to drop our Monday posts. Beginning today, we'll blog regularly on Fridays only, with occasional Wednesday Writing Workouts and other special posts.

We have two main reasons for the change: 1) We fear that with the rise of social media, our readers are having trouble keeping up with all the information being shared online. [I know I am!] And 2) We'd like to have more time for our own writing and teaching. We hope you, our readers, won't be too disappointed by this change in our schedule. We'd love to have your feedback on it in the comments.

In honor of our Blogiversary, I've been doing some virtual spring cleaning here on our site, removing obsolete links, updating information, etc. I've also been spring cleaning my home office. One of the things I discovered was that I have a second, never-used copy of Connie Epstein's classic book The Art of Writing for Children. This is one of my all-time favorite books on the craft of writing for children and teens--I still quote from it in some of my classes. While the info in the section on "Finding and Working with a Publisher" may have changed greatly over the years, the basic instruction on the craft of writing, which composes the majority of the book, still applies. So, rather than put the book in the paper recycling, I plan to bring it to the next writers' meeting I attend and offer it to anyone there who may be interested. Seems appropriate, since our Blogiversary happens to fall on Earth Day!

When I told my fellow TeachingAuthors about the book, Esther suggested that I invite you, our readers, to join in our combined Blogiversary/Earth Day celebration by passing along a book that helped you grow in your craft, or that was a favorite read aloud, or that you'd simply like to share with someone else.

Despite all this spring cleaning, it hasn't felt much like spring around here--lots of cold, gray days and even some snow in the Chicago area. And it's been even worse in other parts of the country. I hope that by sharing the following poem written by JoAnn Early Macken, I'll be able to coax some spring construction around here. Thank you, JoAnn!

     Construction Crew

     by JoAnn Early Macken

     Daffodils bulldoze last year’s leaves.
     Chickadees haul twigs and straw.
     Woodpeckers hammer on trembling trees,
     and crows call out, “Saw! Saw!”
     Their annual project’s a glorious thing—
     they’re building a brand-new spring!

copyright JoAnn Early Macken, who holds all rights

Don't forget to check out this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at The Opposite of Indifference. Before you go, though, do share in the comments if you have a book you're planning to pass along in honor of our Blogiversary/Earth Day celebration!

And remember to always Write with Joy!

Carmela

Patterns in Poetry! How I wrote This Poem—a Poetry Writing Workout

Happy Poetry Friday!  There's a poem for you at the end and a Writing Workout for you, too.  But before we begin, I want you to know that I'm still in the thick of the Poem-A-Day Challenge for Poetry Month. In fact, it's TAKEN OVER MY ENTIRE LIFE!...please don't click on this next link yet...today's poem is the same one I'm discussing in this post.  You've gotta read the story behind the poem first.  It's the law.  

And one more thing before we begin: Tricia has just posted an interview with me at her marvelous The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Come celebrate our blogiversary!   Enter to win a critique of your work, in honor of our blog’s first birthday! 
And please note: Your first entry must say how you follow us—via Google, Networked blogs, or email.  You must post a SEPARATE comment to get a second entry. This makes tracking entries much easier.   Entry deadline is 11 pm (CST) Tuesday, May 4, 2010.

Birthdays. Earth Day.  Poetry Month. Poetry Friday.  The world turns.  What was cloudy becomes clear.  The patterns in our lives rise to the surface.  We lean towards structure.  Forks, spoons and knives separated by dividers.  Children in a choir arranged by height.  Blouses at my local thrift store (yay, thrift stores!) arranged by color.

My mother could always count on me to put her pencils, rubber bands and paper clips in order.  All my marbles grouped themselves into marble villages.  The treasured plastic dinosaurs my sister and I got from a junk shop (all for a dime) quickly found their families.

And something beautiful happens in my brain when a word goes “click,” fitting into a poetic pattern.

There’s an elegant website called Patterns in Poetry researched, written and created by Constance Curran, of Cranberry Designs. I hope one day she’ll add more types of poetry.


So let’s play with patterns in poetry today, in honor of the patterns of our lives.  I’ll take you on the behind-the-scenes tour on how I wrote today’s poem.

I was thinking about how Earth Day and our Blogiversary were both on April 22nd.  I thought back to last year, how I almost told my potential blogmates, “Thank you for inviting me to join your blog, but I’m waaaay too busy to take on another project.”

I thought about the hands of five authors reaching out to me, all the way to the West Coast, and how for some reason I reached back.  THANK GOODNESS!  I wanted to catch that “thank goodness” feeling in a poem.

I began goofing off, thinking of trees and of leaping across the country, across cyberspace.  A first and then a second line came to me:

What does it mean to have made this leap?
To swing from tree to tree to you?

Suddenly I was in a jungle.  So I wrote (still playing, not sure where this was going):

To find, in the midst of the jungle a few
friends who are smart and kind and true?

I put them together:

What does it mean to have made this leap?
To swing from tree to tree to you?
To find, in the midst of the jungle a few
Friends who are smart and kind and true?

I saw the beginning of a pattern:What’s the pattern?  Can you see it, too?

The last three lines rhyme.  The first line doesn’t.  But it needed more.  So I decided to write a few four-line stanzas in which the first line of each stanza rhymes with the first line of the other stanzas, and in which the last three lines of each stanza rhyme with each other.

To put it another way, if each letter stands for a different end rhyme, my first stanza looked like is:
A
B
B
B

Or, to conserve space, A,B,B,B.  What would the next stanza be?  I decided it would be A,C,C,C.  And the next?  A, D,D,D.

Then I began scouring my rhyming dictionary for earthy words that had enough relevant rhymes to support this pattern.

Here’s my list.  Sorry it's so long...but I did promise a back-stage tour. You have a stage pass, might as well get the full tour!  (I’ve sorted them in alphabetical order because…oh!  I guess because I like patterns!)

Bird, heard, nerd, word, absurd, blackbird, songbird, hummingbird, overheard, blurred, purred, stirred,  
Blog, bog, slog, jog, dialogue, travelogue
Book, brook, look, took, shook, overlook,
Branch, blanch,
Creek, beak, peek, seek, week, critique, sneak, tweak, speak, tweet, cheek, meek, geek, weak, mystique, speak,
Deep, sweep, heap, cheep, sleep, reap, steep,
Dirt, alert, convert, divert, expert, insert, unhurt, blurt, assert, revert, introvert, extrovert,
Earth, birth, worth, unearth,
Fellow, hello, mellow,
Green, clean, keen, queen, scene, caffeine, sixteen, routine,
Grow, so, flow, glow, slow, so, ago, tiptoe, zero, volcano, studio, afterglow, bravissimo,
Leaf, …
Leap, deep, sleep, upkeep, reap, keep,
Learn, discern, earn, turn, concern, return,
Old, gold, enfold, bold, hold, retold, told, uphold, thousandfold,
Post, boast, west coast, most, almost, hitching post,
Readers, pleaders, feeder,
Sing, bing, wing, swing, anything, bring, spring, full swing, ring, thing,
Six, politics, mix,
Teacher, creature, preacher, feature,
Teaching, reaching, screeching, beseeching
Thrive, I’ve, hive, alive, arrive, survived, test-drive,
Tree, si, bee, free, gee, key, me, see, we, forsee, agree, esprit, community, disagree, history, courtesy, anthology,
Tweet, feet, seat, beat, sweet, athlete, bleat, complete, greet
Twig, big, sprig, gig, brillig, dig,
World, unfurled, twirled, pearl, girl,
Read, freed, lead, she’d, we’d, exceed, proceed, succeed, head, need, speed, bleed, plead, concede, misread, feed, greed, seed, weed, stampede,
Write, fright, might, night, quite, right, in spite, excite, goodnight, handwrite, polite, tonight, twilight, unite, parasite, oversight, watertight,

And then I chose my words and began to play.  Here’s the result:

BLOG-I-VERSE-A-TREE
by April Halprin Wayland

How does it feel to cross over this creek,
to fly from tree to tree to you?
To find, in the midst of the jungle a few
readers discerning, kind and true?

How does it feel, week after week,
to water a seed, now one year old?
To watch its young, green leaves unfold
as it gives me back a thousand fold?

I feel I’m Bird, just opening her beak,
at the top of a tree, on the first day of Spring,
easily found on Google or Bing,
joining five friends to Tweet, to sing!

© 2010 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

                                                   WRITING WORKOUT

1) Brainstorm a topic.  You can search our posts for the word brainstorming. 

Here’s one: scroll down to the Writing Workout on Carmela’s post. 

2) Find a rhyming dictionary in the library or work with one online, such as RhymeZone.http://www.rhymezone.com/  Begin listing words that might fit your friend or your family or dog or whatever memory or dream you’ve decided to write about.

3) Now play with stanzas in this pattern:
A,B,B,B.
A,C,C,C. 
A,D,D,D. 

(Ha ha. ADDD indeed!)

4) If you can’t fit your ideas into that pattern, look for a poem you like, figure out its pattern and imitate it.  Or create your own pattern. 

5) Play!  Remember to breathe!  And write with joy.

drawings © 2010 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

Our First Blogiversary, Earth Day, and a Critique Giveaway!

Happy Blogiversary to us!
Mary Ann kicked off our celebration on Monday, but it's exactly one year ago today that we launched this blog. When we chose the date, we didn't realize it also happened to be Earth Day. If you missed JoAnn's Earth Day poem last week, I hope you'll stop and read it here now.

Today, finally, are the details of our special giveaway:
As a thank you to our readers, we're offering a critique of your choice from a TeachingAuthor!

One lucky winner will be able to choose a critique of one of the following:

• fiction picture book (up to 1000 words) critiqued by Mary Ann 
• nonfiction picture book or beginning of longer nonfiction manuscript (up to 1000 words) critiqued by JoAnn
• synopsis of a middle grade or young adult novel (up to two pages max, single-spaced, 12-point font) critiqued by Esther
• first five pages of a middle grade or young adult novel (up to 1250 words) by Jeanne Marie
• poetry (up to thirty lines, 12-point font)--this can be in one poem or several poems, critiqued by April 
• middle grade short story (up to 1000 words) critiqued by Carmela  

Since the manuscripts will be submitted via email, for the first time, this giveaway will be open to all our readers worldwide. However, be sure to read the rules below carefully before entering:

• This giveaway is for our readers. Therefore, to qualify, you must follow us via Google Friend connect, Facebook/Networked Blogs, or as an email subscriber. If you are not already a follower, subscribe via one of the links in the sidebar before you enter. (We will verify that you're a follower!)
• Post a comment saying how you follow us for one entry. Please indicate which type of critique you'd like to win, too.
• You may receive one bonus entry by helping to spread the word about this giveaway via a blog post, Tweet, or Facebook link. As proof, you must post a second comment containing a link to your blog post, Twitter address, or Facebook wall. (Feel free to copy the above blogiversary image to your blog.)
• No more than two entries per person. All entries must be as comments to today's post.
• Entry deadline is 11 pm (CST) Tuesday, May 4, 2010.
• The winner will be determined using the random number generator at Random.org, and will be announced some time Wednesday, May 5.  (It may be late in the day, as I'll be "out and about" at a school visit that morning.)

If you'd like to read about our qualifications before choosing your critique, see our "About Us" page.

Please note: your manuscript must be formatted in the same way you would to submit it to an editor or agent: in a standard 12-point font on 8 1/2 x 11" paper with one inch margins. For more on manuscript format, see this article. The appropriate TeachingAuthor will contact the winner via email regarding the submission procedure.

Important: Feedback and comments to the winner from the TeachingAuthor cannot be used as an endorsement in any way.

Hmm. I hope I haven't left out anything important. In case I did, feel free to ask questions in your comments. Good luck to all!

And if you missed yesterday's post, please take a moment to read it and give us some feedback on how we can make our blog even better in the year ahead.

Happy Earth Day and happy writing!
Carmela

Earth Day + National Poetry Month = Earth Day Poem

My husband and I walked through a nearby park along the Milwaukee River one beautiful spring morning in early April. We were appalled by the amount of trash we saw on the banks and in the water. We picked up garbage as we walked, and I listed in my notebook some of the things we carried to nearby trash containers. As we walked, I began to hear the poem below forming in my mind. Every item included in the poem is something we picked up that morning. I went back a few days later with my camera to record the heartbreaking scene.

Spring Awakening

Dainty speckled dog’s tooth violet
leaves poke up from warming soil
through a six-foot strip of muddy
shredded plastic bag,
     plastic straws, a root beer can,

     caution tape, a bottle top,
     a lip gloss tube, old newspapers,
     a spray paint can, and one flip-flop.

Two red-bellied woodpeckers
shriek and tap above our heads
as we survey the rushing river
and the garbage on its banks:
     plastic lighter, cigarette butts,
     chunks of broken Styrofoam,
     coffee cups with plastic lids,
     a bandage strip, a plastic comb.

Mama goose sits on her nest
amid the evidence of thoughtless
picnickers and fishermen,
hikers, joggers, families:
     McDonald’s ketchup packet, wrappers
     (Kit-Kat, Slim Jim, Power Shot™,
     Cheetos®), plastic bait container,
     broken plastic flower pot.

Multicolored shopping bags
     flutter from just-budding trees.
Ducks glide past a bobbing bottle,
     half a pound of plain cream cheese.

Fish swim under plastic buckets.
Water bottles tip on top
     of water bottles ten feet from
          a trash container—this must stop!

On and on, the river
     carries everything we toss it,
          and we toss too much to bear.

Wake up, people!
Don’t you care
     what happens to this rushing river,
          Mama goose,
          the gliding ducks,
          the fish,
          red bellied woodpeckers?

Wake up and smell the dog tooth violets,
     poking through
          the shredded
               plastic bags.

Writing Workout: List Poem

I believe that as teachers, we have not only the opportunity but the responsibility to impress upon our students the importance—and the urgency—of taking care of our environment—not only on Earth Day, but throughout the year. We can study the effects of pollution, we can participate in cleanup efforts, and we can write!

The poem I wrote about the river is a list poem. Begin one of your own (or help your students write theirs) by thinking of a subject or a place you are passionate about. Observe it carefully or remember it and list its important details. Include more than just the list—tell the reader why the details are important. I used rhyme because I liked the singsong, careless feel it implied and I wanted to lighten the heavy message, but your poem doesn't have to rhyme. Speak your mind and make your message clear.

 

Out and About

On Saturday, April 17, I'll be at Books & Company in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, at 3 p.m. for a reading and signing with Jacqueline Houtman (The Reinvention of  Edison Thomas) and Kashmira Sheth (Boys without Names). I'll read Waiting Out the Storm and talk about writing, poetry, and maybe Earth Day. Stop by if you're in the neighborhood!

JoAnn Early Macken