Words Writ in Water: A Poem in Your Pocket by Margaret McNamara and G. Brian Karas

MR. TIFFIN'S CLASS HAD NEVER HAD AN AUTHOR VISIT THEM BEFORE.

"EMMA CRANE IS A POET!" SAID MR. TIFFIN.

"AND DOESN'T KNOW IT!" SAID ROBERT. "THAT RHYMES!"

"NOT ALL POEMS RHYME," SAID ELINOR.

Mr. Tiffin's kids are used to having unusual things happen in their class. They've computed the average number of seeds in a pumpkin, and they've solved apple riddles in an orchard, but this visiting poet thing is a new wrinkle, even for Mr. Tiffin.

And when Mr. Tiffin tells the class they are going to write their own poems to share with Emma Crane, most of class takes it in stride. But superstar student Elinor worries herself right into full-blown writer's block. Writing poems has to be harder than just writing sentences with proper punctuation. Poetry is serious writing, and Elinor is afraid her poem will not be perfect, at least not perfect enough to read to a real poet.

Elinor listens hard as every day Mr. Tiffin has something new about poetry for them to learn--similes, metaphors, haiku, concrete poems, puzzle poems, and how to see with their "poet's eye." Her classmates busily pen poems that fit their personal style. Jokester Jake jots down a funny poem right away:

MOM'S COMPLAINT
by Jake

We're out of apples, kids--again.
Don't eat so many, please!
They're costing me a lot of dough.
You think they grow on trees??

But Elinor just can't get her poem to be what she wants it to be. She even tries composing six haikus with at least three metaphors and two similes!

"THIS STINKS!" she said. "THESE ARE NOT POETRY!"

The classroom bulletin board is covered with famous poems and student poems, but when A Poem In Your Pocket Day arrives, Elinor sadly realizes that she will be the only student who has no poem for her pocket. What will a real poet like Emma Crane say to her?

"NO POEM IS PERFECT." SHE SAYS.

Shyly Elinor confesses to the famous poet that when she tries to write down her poems,

"... THE WORDS DISAPPEAR LIKE CHALK ON A SIDEWALK IN THE RAIN."

Emma Crane smiles and tells Elinor that the poem in pocket of her mind is quite good enough, in Margaret McNamara's latest, A Poem in Your Pocket (Mr. Tiffin's Classroom Series) Schwartz and Wade, 2015). with all the varied characters in her Mr. Tiffen's Classroom series getting ready to celebrate Poetry Month in April. As in the previous titles in the set, noted artist G. Brian Karas provides his uniquely charming illustrations of different children, each finding his or her own poet's eye in their own way in Mr. Tiffen's busy classroom.

Namara's and Karas' previous noted books in this series are How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? (Mr. Tiffin's Classroom Series) and The Apple Orchard Riddle (Mr. Tiffin's Classroom Series) (See reviews here).

Somebody Loves Me? The Candy Smash by Jacqueline Davies

Evan looked over at Jessie's desk. Lined up in neat rows were four perfect paper spirals, four curly paper rosettes, and twenty identical paper hearts... so precise they looked like they came from a factory.

It was a times like this that Evan wished his little sister wasn't in the same fourth-grade class with him.

Jessie was good at math and writing and science and just about everything that counted in school. She had even skipped the third grade. Why did she have to be so smart?

But despite her precocious abilities, Jessie is only eight years old, so when the love bug bites in Mrs. Overton's fourth grade class, Jessie just doesn't get it. To her meticulous, scientific mind, it is a mystery to be solved empirically. And since the February issue of her newspaper, The 4-0 Forum, is due soon, she decides that a survey of what her classmates think about love, complete with statistical pie graphs, is the way to explain the unexplainable.

Like, why is someone leaving everyone in the class personalized boxes of candy hearts? Why is her best friend Megan Moriarty acting strange, bawling in the girls' bathroom and refusing to tell Jessie all about it? When she finds his poem "Pony Girl" while emptying his trash and publishes it on the front page of the Forum, why is her brother Evan angry instead of pleased? And why is Mrs. Overton confiscating all her copies of the Forum and talking about violations of "privacy?"

Why is everyone in the class mad at her when her statistics are perfectly valid?

In this fourth book in her best-selling The Lemonade War series, Davies continues to document with humor and insight the differences between the empirical Jessie and her intuitive brother Evan. Evan finds himself inexplicably under the spell of the pony-tailed Megan Moriarity, getting that special zing from Mrs. Overton's poetry lessons, and writing his own poetry using his newly learned skills. Jessie, as yet un-stricken with Cupid's early arrows, doesn't understand why everyone's crushes are embarrassing secrets, but she's sure that documenting everyone's experiences will uncover the truth, even when she discovers to her surprise that she is the object of a mysterious someone's crush, too. Jessie, of course, is clueless, but readers will spot her admirer right away, in this excellent sequel in Davies' outstanding series for elementary readers.

Growing up, especially discovering the strange ways of the human heart, is hard to do, but in the hands of a terrific writer like Davies, who mixes sadness, humor, and love perfectly, The Candy Smash (The Lemonade War Series) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) is a perfect February read-aloud novel, combining a great middle grade fiction outing with built-in poetry lessons for a blend of Valentine's Day-Poetry Month topicality. Davies appends the full text of Jessie's censored newspaper along with her own glossary of poetry terms and the full texts of poems--from Emily Dickinson through E.E. Cummings and on to Sylvia Plath--referenced in the plot. This series, like Beverly Cleary's Ramona Quimby series, takes the reader along with the growing experiences of memorable characters in realistic family, friendship, and school experiences. Not to be missed!

Words Are What We Have: Word After Word After Word by Patricia MacLachlan

"Is what you write real?" asked May.

Ms. Mirabel liked that question. "Real or unreal. They're just about the same. They are both about magical words."

"Do you write with an outline?" Russell asked.

Ms. Mirabel laughed loudly. It was a sudden, startling laugh, and we all laughed, too.

"Of course not," she said. "Outlines are silly. Once you write the outline, there's no reason to write the story. You write to participate... to find out what is going to happen."

"I write to change my life, to make it come out the way I want it to," she said.

Miss Cash frowned. That is not what she had taught us in creative writing class.

It is the final six weeks of fifth grade, and Miss Cash has bravely brought in an actual writer, Ms. Mirabel, to work with her writing class. Miss Mirabel has "long, troubled hair," and a offbeat take on the writing process. The four friends--May, Evie, Russell, Lucy, and Henry--are intrigued with her ideas. Each has something they fear will not come out the way they want in their lives: Lucy's mom has cancer; May's family has suddenly decided to adopt a baby; Evie's mom has left home; and Russell's beloved dog had just died. Henry's life is perfect, and considering his friend's problems, he worries that he can't hold on to that perfection.

Bit by bit Ms. Mirabel leads the children to begin to write about themselves, their fears, their sadness, the things they love, and gradually the magic of words, the magic of making something unreal and yet real out of them, flows through them.

Newbery author Patricia MacLachlan's latest Word After Word After Word (Katherine Tegen/Collins, 2010) is a short, easy read, but not a book for the early chapter reader per se, requiring the experience of the middle reader to really get her theme, complex but offered in simple narrative form, that middle elementary children can absorb. Pair this one with the Newbery-winning Sharon Creech's award-winning Love That Dog and sequel Hate That Cat: A Novel to help middle graders understand what poetry is and what it can do.