Showing posts with label poem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poem. Show all posts

September 25 - Happy Birthday, Shel Silverstein

Posted on September 25, 2018

Today's famous birthday was a writer - a poet - a cartoonist ! 

Some of his books are really famous, for kids' books...and really, really famous, for kids' poetry books! Here are three you may have heard of:


The Giving Tree is a story; the book has sold more than 5 million copies, has been translated into more than 30 languages, and has appeared on countless lists of "best children's books" and the like.

A Light in the Attic is a collection of poems.



And Where the Sidewalk Ends is an earlier (and I believe more famous) collection of poems.



Born on this date in 1930, in Chicago, Illinois, Silverstein started to draw at a young age, and he was bad enough at sports that he used writing and drawings as an outlet as a teenager.

Silverstein was expelled from a university, and when he tried to go to art school instead, that was interrupted by him being drafted into the U.S. Army. But that's okay, since he later said that college had been a waste of time for him. He said that the money he spent on tuition would have been better spent traveling the world, meeting people.

And of course military service often allows people to travel. Silverstein served in Japan and Korea and had many cartoons published in a military newspaper.

When he got home from the Army, he sold hot dogs at a ballpark, but he also submitted cartoons to magazines. One magazine sent him around the world to write about and cartoon-illustrate his adventures! So that was another chance to REALLY educate himself.

Of course, soon Silverstein started writing books and being published and becoming popular and famous and even beloved! Although he is most famous as a children's author and poet, he has also written songs and stories for TV and for theater. One of his most famous songs, "A Boy Named Sue," was recorded by Johnny Cash and earned Silverstein a Grammy Award.

Did you know...?

  • Silverstein cared a lot about books as physical objects. He felt that they had to be printed on the right paper - the right size, color, shape, and feel of paper. He didn't allow paperback editions of most of his books because they wouldn't have been printed on as good a quality of paper.
  • Silverstein's books are surprisingly controversial. For example, some people think that The Giving Tree is about a super positive relationship, and others feel it is about a terrible relationship. Many people have interpretations of it - it's about humans and the environment, it's about children and parents, it's about humans and God, it's about friendship. Some people even insist that it is satire.

    You're probably thinking, "Well, what did Shel Silverstein
    mean to say with The Giving Tree? But Silverstein had a strict rule about never explaining what he'd written.

  • Some of Silverstein's poems are controversial. Like, how many parents want their kids to read "How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes"? The book A Light in the Attic has been banned from so many libraries and schools, it appears on the "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books" list.





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May 24 – “Mary Had a Little Lamb” Published

Posted May 24, 2015

There really was a Mary who took a lamb to school!

The girl's name was Mary Sawyer (no record of the pet lamb's name), and she took her pet to school at the suggestion of her brother. Apparently, the lamb did cause commotion in the classroom!


This happened some time in the early 1800s, in the town of Sterling, Massachusetts.

A young man named John Roulstone was studying with his uncle and saw the lamb-at-school incident. Some people say that he was so pleased by it that he wrote these lines and gave them to Mary the day after her lamb's visit:

Mary had a little lamb,
His fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.

Hale was a writer and editor.
Later a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale added three more verses to the simple ditty and published the poem on this date in 1830. (Some people say that Hale wrote the entire poem, and Roulstone – though he had been there for the lamb's visit – had nothing to do with the poem.) Here is the rest of the poem:

He followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rule,
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out,
But still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about,
Till Mary did appear.

"Why does the lamb love Mary so?"
The eager children cry.
"Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know."
The teacher did reply.


A musician later set the nursery rhyme to a tune and created a song. After that, two different blues musicians popularized the song. Famed inventor Thomas Edison recorded the poem on his newly invented phonograph – actually, it was the very first recorded verse anywhere in the world! At some point since the poem was published, the town of Sterling put up a statue representing Mary's Little Lamb in the town center.

Does it seem surprising to you that such a simple little poem and song can become and stay so famous? I think I am surprised by the facts that (1) it's American, not British (I think I thought it was a lot older than it is), and (2) it's based on a real incident.


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Day of Slavic Script, Education, and Culture










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April 30 – Poem in Your Pocket Day

Posted on April 30, 2015


Today is the last day of National Poetry Month. Many people celebrate it by carrying a poem with them everywhere they go today, and sharing it throughout the day with family, friends, acquaintances, even strangers!

For pocket-fitting and sharing purposes, I think people would be wise to carry about rather short poems!

Some towns do more for Poem in Your Pocket Day. For example, Charlottesville, Virginia, has street teams that hand out poem scrolls to shoppers and distribute poem scrolls to the local hospital, children's museum, senior centers and nursing homes, libraries, and even downtown businesses.

Some libraries and schools and coffeeshops hold poetry readings or poetry "slams."

Some people tweet their poems or post short poems on their blogs or social media pages.

That's what I am going to do. Here are some of my favorite pocket-sized poems:


Consider making pocket pouches to
hold poems.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.


If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
by Emily Dickinson
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.



Risk
by Anais Nin
And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.



Watch your thoughts,
For they become words.
Watch your words,
For they become actions.
Watch your habits,
For they become character.
Watch your character,
For it becomes your destiny.
  • Lao Tzu


To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
To gain all while you give,
To roam the roads of lands remote,
To travel is to live.
– Hans Christian Anderson


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March 5 – Discover What Your Name Means Day

Posted on March 5, 2014

All week long, it's Celebrate Your Name Week, with such adorable days as:
(Sunday 3/2) - Namesake Day
(Monday 3/3) - Fun Facts About Names Day 
(Tuesday 3/4) - Unique Names Day
(Wednesday 3/5) - Discover What Your Name Means Day
(Thursday 3/6) - Name Tag Day
(Friday 3/7) - Middle Name Day
(Saturday 3/8) - Descendants Day

  • Find out how popular your name is using the Social Security Admin. website. I looked at the “Popular Names by Birth Year” tab and found out that my sister, brother and I all were in the top 20 names of our birth years, but that none of my kids were in their years' most-popular lists. 

  • Most names don't really connect with their meanings. For example, nobody hears my name (Cathy) and thinks, “pure,” and few people hear the name “Philip” and think “friend of horses.” Right? But when you are writing a fictional story, you can use names to help set a picture in somebody's mind. Author J.K. Rowling is really good at that. You just know, when you hear the name Fleur Delacour, that the character is going to be pretty; whereas Argus Filch just sounds a lot less pleasant. Pet names, too, sound very different, from Scabbers the rat to Hedwig the owl to Nagini the snake! 
  • Find out if your name has been used in a song title here. 
  • The best way to celebrate the day, perhaps, is to invent your own meaning for your name. You can do so with an “acrostic name poem”: Write your name in capital letters, vertically, with each letter positioned at the start of a line. Use that skeleton to write a poem about yourself. Here are two examples:
  • J is for joking through days and through nights,
  • O is for open to ideas and new sights,
  • H is for humane and caring and sweet,
  • N is for never, ever, never eating meat!



  • Creative, scribbling away into the night.
  • Artistic, but in a nicey-nicey kitschy way...
  • Tolerant and passionate about fairness...
  • Hard-working for my family...
  • Yearning to know more about life, the universe, and everything.

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