Celebrate Poetry All Month Long with Read, Discuss, Do

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  Happy National Poetry Month! We are celebrating National Poetry Month with a weekly poetry challenge all month long. To follow along, subscribe to our newsletter or check back here every Monday and Friday throughout the month of April for updates.  Kickoff: Books and resources for National Poetry Month   Week one: Read and write haiku  Article: A Brief History of Poetry by Marci Whitehurst Week two: Read and write odes Article: Eight Creative Ways to Explore Poetry All Year Long by Rebecca J. Gomez Week three: Read and write riddle poems   Week four: Poet's choice! If you and/or your children/students participate in any of our challenges this month, we'd love to hear from you.  You can  email  us or  tag us  on Instagram (use the hashtag #RDDPoetryChallenge or #RDDPoetryMonth). We will be sharing some readers’ poems in a round-up post at the end of the month, so if you’d like your poems to be considered, please let us know when you s...
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WINDOW FROST: The Magic of Picture Books

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by Laura Sassi

There’s a scene in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS in which Laura and Mary spend a magical morning etching pictures in the frosted windowpanes of their little cabin using Ma’s thimble.  As a child I wanted to try that, but our windows were too well-insulated to gather frost. Imagine my delight, then, a few winters ago to discover thick frost completely covering the old-fashioned windows of our detached garage. Remembering that scene from Wilder’s book, I longed to find a thimble and do a little ice etching of my own. And that’s exactly what I did one day, using my keys, instead. Doesn’t it look magical?

Like window frost begging to be etched, good picture books invoke in me a nostalgic return to childhood and a reminder of the simple joys in life. When my children were younger, our days were enriched by reading picture books. What a treat it was to curl up together on the sofa with a stack of books. The joy we found in those books was not flashy or over the top, but simple and deep. We cheered on Mike Mulligan and Maryanne, from Virginia Lee Burton’s MIKE MULLIGAN AND HIS STEAM SHOVEL (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 1939), to dig a little faster and a little deeper, and afterwards, scurried outside do our own digging in the snow. And Sam McBratney’s GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU (Candlewick, 2005) evoked such warmth that we held our own matches to show how much we loved each other.

If you’re feeling like you’ve gotten too caught up in the busy-ness of life, may I suggest heading straight to the children’s department of your nearest library or bookstore and stocking up on some of your old favorites as well as some delightful new picture books? Then curl up and read, read, read!

It won’t take long to feel the magic, for picture books hold within their 32-pages, that sometimes much-needed reminder that our deepest joys are found in the simple pleasures of life – baking, imagining, exploring nature, loving others.

Need help getting started?  Here are a few of my favorites from over the years:

Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s Cookies: Bite-Sized Life Lessons, illustrated by Jane Dyer (HarperCollins, 2006)

Diana Murray's Ned the Knitting Pirate, illustrated by Leslie Lammle (Roaring Brook Press/Macmillian, 2016)

Lindsey McDivitt’s Nature's Friend: The Gwen Frostic Story, illustrated by Eileen Ryan Ewen (Sleeping Bear Press, 2018)

Sarah Weeks’ Woof: A Love Story, illustrated by Holly Berry (HarperCollins, 2009)

This post was adapted from a post that originally appeared on Laura's blog, https://laurasassitales.wordpress.com

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