Ten Books for National Poetry Month (plus a weekly poetry challenge)

  April is a mere five days away, and that means it’s almost National Poetry Month! To help you get a kick start to celebrating poetry throughout April, we’ve put together an assortment of book recommendations. You’ll find a little bit of everything in this list of ten books: poetry collections, picture book stories told in poems, biographies of poets, even a novel in verse! We hope this list is just the beginning of a month of reading, discussing and doing (that is, writing ) poetry! We have a month long celebration planned in which we challenge our readers and the children in their lives to read, discuss, and write four different types of poems—one challenge per week. You can join the weekly poetry fun by subscribing to our newsletter , visiting the website regularly for updates, following us on Instagram (@readdiscussdo), or all of the above! To read : Choose a book from this list or any poetry book. To discuss : Do you usually like poetry? Why or why not? Can you think of a poem y

Parent and Child Poetry Challenge: Diamante Poems

 

Week two of the Poetry Challenge is exploring the diamante, a poetry form that was invented specifically for students!

The poem gets its name from its shape -- a diamond. This type of poem is a descriptive poem with seven lines, and they do not rhyme. There are some very specific rules to this form of poetry. The most common type of diamante is a synonym diamante. The first line introduces the subject, the next five lines describe the subject, and the last line is a synonym of the word in line one. Here are the basic diamante rules:

Line one is a noun.

Line two is two adjectives.

Line three is three verbs.

Line four is four nouns.

Line five is three verbs.

Line six is two adjectives.

Line seven is one noun (a synonym of the word used in line one). 

Here is an example of a diamante about a baby:

Baby

Cute, sweet

Sleeping, crying, drooling

Blanket, binkie, diaper, crib

Cooing, wiggling, eating

Fussy, chubby

Infant

Another form of diamante is an antonym diamante. In this type of poem, the first and last lines are opposites, or can be thought of as opposites. This form is a little trickier to write because it switches subjects half way through. Here is an example of an antonym diamante:

Lake

Wavy, cool

Swimming, diving, wading

Boat, ripples, shoreline, sand

Walking, digging, stomping

Solid, warm

Beach

Diamantes are a great form of poetry for kids to try because the process gets them thinking about parts of speech and challenges them to think creatively about their subjects. But they are low pressure because they are basically simple lists! They are also pretty cool visually once they're finished. I encourage you to have your kids write out their finished poems on colorful, diamond-shaped paper and place them somewhere prominent to show them off. 

I hope you and your kids write diamantes this week! If you do, please share them with us using the hashtag #RDDPoetryChallenge. You can also email them to readdiscussdo@gmail.com.

Happy writing!


Comments

Mindy Baker said…
Love this! Can’t wait to write some!
Rebecca Gomez said…
I look forward to seeing your diamantes, Mindy!