George, Kristine O’Connell. 2001. TOASTING MARSHMALLOWS: CAMPING POEMS. Ill. by Kate Kiesler. New York: Clarion Books. ISBN 061804597X.

Experience a family camping trip without leaving the library with this selection of thirty poems celebrating the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the great outdoors. Included poem themes range from pitching a tent to fishing and hiking, through wildlife encounters and exploring caves, to packing and returning home.

Award winning children’s poet Kristine O’Connell George uses sensory words and unexpected descriptive phrasing to create vivid mental pictures for the reader:

Cave
The cave breathes icy and ancient,
measuring time with slow drips
that echo as water hits granite
somewhere deep in this cavern.

Owl
I hear you, Owl.
The wind rush
of your wings
shouldered and spread,
pleating the night,
the satin flap of your feathered cape.

The Best Paths
The best paths
are whispers
in the grass,
a bent twig,
a token, a hint,
easily missed.

The best paths
hide themselves
until the right
someone
comes along.

The best paths
lead you
to where
you didn't know
you wanted to go.

Artist Kate Kiesler uses acrylics to paint illustrations that capture the mood and setting of each poem. Her paintings are detailed yet impressionistic. Kiesler’s painting technique perfectly captures the soft radiance of campfire light, the shimmer of sunlight sparkling on river water ripples, and the silvery gleam of moon and star light far from the glow of urban lights.

Reviews and Awards

Booklist starred review: “this fine collection brings the outdoors up close in quiet, immediate poems that engage all the senses.”

Publishers Weekly starred review: “George's poems are well crafted, varied and easily accessible. George's poems shine, the images clear and startling. {Kielser] suffuses her acrylic landscapes with light filtered through leaves. A concrete poem in the shape of a waning moon is exquisite…Readers will definitely want S-mores.”

School Library Journal starred review: “the poems are varied and inventive, replete with marvelous images and universal truths.”

School Library Journal Best Books Of The Year, 2001
Best Books For Children 7^th & 8^th Editions
Bulletin of The Center For Children's Books Recommended Titles

Connections

Try a Campout Story Time program featuring some of the following books, along with campfire songs from Camp Granada: Sing-Along Camp Songs by Frane Lessac, while sitting around a flashlight campfire and munching a no-bake S’mores mix of Teddy Grahams, mini marshmallows, and mini chocolate chips - fun!

S is for S'mores: A Camping Alphabet, Helen Foster James, 2007
A Camping Spree With Mr. Magee, Chris Van Dusen, 2003
When I Go Camping With Grandma, Marion Dane Bauer, 1996
Camping With the President, Ginger Wadsworth, 2009
When We Go Camping, Margriet Ruurs, 2001

Other collaborative poetry books by George and Kiesler:
Great Frog Race and Other Poems, 1997
Old Elm Speaks: Tree Poems, 1998

Grimes, Nikki. 2004. WHAT IS GOODBYE?. Ill. by Raul Colon.

New York: Hyperion. ISBN 0786807784.

What is goodbye?
Where is the good in it?
One leaves
and many hearts
are broken.
There must be
a better arithmetic
somewhere.
--Nikki Grimes, What is Goodbye?

Jerilyn and Jesse’s older brother, Jaron, has died. Told in poems alternating between the voices of sister and brother, this novel explores the feelings of those left behind – the disbelief, the sorrow, the anger, the guilt, the coping, and the eventual goodbye. Though trim in size and containing only sixty-four unnumbered pages, this novella in verse eloquently portrays the grieving process in a way that is heartfelt and genuine.

Nikki Grimes uses imagery and figurative language to give the voices of Jaron’s two siblings emotional impact. The poems are presented in twos, with each pair sharing a title, expressing viewpoints from both Jesse and Jerilyn. Jesse’s poems are told in rhyme, while older sister Jeri’s poems are expressed in free verse.

Mad -- Jerilyn Mad -- Jesse
With every step I take How could you die and
I slice my feet break your word to me?
on the jagged pieces You’re nothing but a
you’ve smashed lying little rat.
our family into. You left me, Jaron.
I hate you for that!

It is only after the anniversary of Jaron’s death that the family begins to heal. The book’s final poem, Photograph, is written for two voices to read together,

“Mom and Dad, Jesse and me,
a new kind of family, one piece missing,
but we’re whole again.”

Small, poignant vignettes by Raul Colon perfectly express the disjointed lives and strong emotions experienced by survivors as they try to understand and rebuild around the emptiness caused by the loss of their loved one. “Colón's paintings in muted colors combine imagism with realism to create an emotional dreamscape on nearly every page.” (School Library Journal, 2004)

Reviews and Awards

Booklist: “Moving and wise, these are poems that beautifully capture a family's heartache as well as the bewildering questions that death brings, and they reinforce the message in Grimes' warm author's note: 'There's no right or wrong way to feel when someone close to you dies'. "

Kirkus Reviews: “Grimes succeeds in creating distinct personalities for each member of the family and distinctly different ways of dealing with their grief as well.”

School Library Journal starred review: “Grimes' novella in verse is a prime example of how poetry and story can be combined to extend one another."

ALA Notable Children's Books, 2005
School Library Journal Best Books Of The Year, 2004

Connections

Class discussions - is there a right way or a wrong way to express grief? Is it okay not to express grief? How could reading this book help someone who has experienced loss?

Art projects – if you could draw a picture of ‘grief’, what would it look like?

Library – display books dealing with the subject of sorrow:
Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, Michael Rosen
Behind You, Jacqueline Woodson
The Last Invisible Boy, Evan Kuhlman
Sun and Spoon, Kevin Henkes
I Wish I Could Hold Your Hand, Pat Palmer
Remembering Mrs. Rossi, Amy Hest
The One Left Behind, Willo Davis Roberts

Hesse, Karen. 1997. OUT OF THE DUST. New York: Scholastic. ISBN 0590360809.

Set during the Great Depression, this compelling tale introduces us to Billie Jo, a fourteen-year-old girl struggling with her family to survive on an Oklahoma wheat farm that is suffering the effects of the Dust Bowl. The novel covers the period of January 1934 to December 1935, but is far more than an account of an agricultural disaster or one family’s perspective of it. Told in the form of free verse poems from first-person point of view, Hesse balances the “black storms” of the Oklahoma plains with the internal storms besetting Billie Jo after a tragic fire takes the lives of her mother and unborn brother. Billie Jo blames herself for the accident, though she suffers severe burns on her hands in trying to put out the fire.

Billie Jo shares her mother’s musical gift and plays jazz on the family’s prized piano but sadly the injuries to her hands preclude Billie Jo’s best chance for emotional healing, preventing her from expressing her grief or reaching out to friends following the tragedy.
Despite everything, Billie Jo copes with her circumstances and learns to forgive nature, her father, and herself. Through her poems, Hesse explores Billie Jo's feelings of pain, grief, longing, rage, and occasionally joy, revealing a “determined heroine who confronts unrelenting misery and begins to transcend it.” (Kirkus Reviews, 1997)

The author’s descriptions of the efforts the residents took to cope with the dust present an authentic representation of the time period and help the reader gain insight into what it was like to battle the pervasive, windblown soil that permeated and smothered houses, lungs, and livelihoods. Notes on the book’s sources and resources for further exploration of the subject were not included, perhaps to focus attention on the emotional aspects of the story. “Hesse's ever-growing skill as a writer willing to take chances with her form shines through superbly in her ability to take historical facts and weave them into the fictional story of a character young people will readily embrace.” (SLJ, 1997)

Reviews and Awards

Publishers Weekly: "This intimate novel, written in stanza form, poetically conveys the heat, dust and wind of Oklahoma. With each meticulously arranged entry, Hesse paints a vivid picture of her heroine's emotions."

Booklist starred review: “the story is bleak, but Hesse's writing transcends the gloom and transforms it into a powerfully compelling tale of a girl with enormous strength, courage, and love.”

School Library Journal starred review: “The author's astute and careful descriptions of life during the dust storms of the 1930s are grounded in harsh reality.”

Newbery Medal winner, 1998
Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, 1998
School Library Journal Best Books Of The Year, 1997
ALA Best Books For Young Adults 1998
ALA Notable Children’s Books, 1998
Numerous state book awards

Connections

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s is hard for young people of today to imagine. To give students perspective and to help them understand the nature of this ecological disaster, one extension activity would be to show a video documentary on the subject. This excellent video from PBS examines both the Dust Bowl’s environmental causes and it’s human impact:

THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
Surviving The Dust Bowl
Director: Mark Samels, Rocky Collins
Rated: NR Run time: 55 min.
Studio: PBS Home Video
Video Release Date: April 28, 1998

Other historical fiction novels told in verse, letter, or diary format by Karen Hesse:
Aleutian Sparrow, 2003
Letters from Rivka, 1992
Stowaway, 2000
Witness, 2001